What does Linear Plot Progression Need to be Good?

[Zippity]

I've noticed many popular games have linear plot progression with each heroine. What I mean by linear progression is that you have an open world to explore, but heroines will just hang out waiting for you to complete tasks/get skills high enough until you push their stories forward. They will never stop waiting for you to move forward and gameplay can be summed up in a walkthrough documents with instructions such as "talk to her in the afternoon, pick this option, go to the garage and get this item, bring it back to her, ect." There is very little player choice, if any it's usually a final choice in a characters path.

Examples of this model are Summertime Saga, Son of a Bitch, Mythic Manor, Harem Hotel.

On paper I dislike this model. I feel it just adds a couple steps to the sensation of "press button get porn" sensation. But then I've also played the shit out of games that use this type of gameplay. The titles above I've clocked hours and hours into.

So what do these types of games need in them to make them good? Is it the writing? Is it the amount of content? Is it the visuals?

As to your first few points, I believe the reason you see so many relationship grinders, where the various female/male characters each have linear story arcs, opened up through the grind game play mechanics, is primarily due to the ease of making those systems... When all you have to do is set up brief rules (i.e. character stat walls, day/time mechanics, purchase mechanics, etc.) to open up particular characters story arcs in a step by step method, with little to no variation, it is much simpler and less of a headache from a developers point of view... As all you have to do is setup those content wall rules for each step in the progression and then make the visuals, story, and plot for the scenes/events associated to each step...

It's more complex and time consuming to create branches in a characters story arc, depending on the factors/rules for each branch off, and their included steps... The developer then has to concern themselves with continuity amongst the other characters, in relation to a each other... And it only gets more complicated, if more then one character has branching story lines, and they somehow have to intersect with other characters, and their possible myriad of story lines... Especially in the relationship grinder types which you mentioned... Too much room for mistakes and definitely more time consuming... I've seen very few developers try to include this form of complexity in these styles of VN/Games, and either they do very little of it, or the project suffered from many continuity errors, plot holes, and pacing issues... Just think of how difficult it is to do in a normal Visual Novel with branching story lines, and exponentially increase that difficulty, for these style of VN/Games...

All that is why you probably do not see non-linear relationship grinders in the same arena as Mythic Manor, Corruption, and so on...

As to your last set of questions... Each answer depends on the intention of the relationship grinder in question... Some are designed with story in mind, and some are just meant to be strings of porn... VN/Games like Harem Hotel and Mythic Manor mixes in some humor, decent Asian visuals, a tiny bit of story, and so on... But primarily they are focused on the sexual relationship build up content... VN/Games like Corruption are purely over the top porn fest grinders... They have no focus on any form of meaningful story and/or plot... It's all about progressive sexual buildup... Games like Summertime Saga, put a bit more focus on the comedy elements, with a small amount of story, and a more cartoony style feel to the visuals...

As to what would make a good VN/Game built around a relationship grinder? As you can see from your examples, good story writing is needed, but not to the same degree that a good story based Visual Novel would need good story writing skills and talent... It would be nice to see a grinder, like those you mentioned, that focused a bit more on the story, but it's just not common place, at the moment... Call it laziness, call it time constraints, call it unnecessary in porn fests, call it what you will... As to the amount of content, the more character arcs a developer has to contend with, the more time consuming it will be to keep each characters content up to speed with each release update... Especially with how releases tend to be treated in this market, with the typical 1-3 months for release updates... Of course it depends on the individual developers, as to time constraints, and team sizes... Amount of content is something that can become an issue regardless of the VN/Game style, as it isn't just these styles that has to content with this issue...

As to visuals, I can only suggest that once a style is determined, stick to it... Be consistent... Getting part way through a project and starting over, or changing visuals part way through, is typically detrimental to the over all project... Both myself and many others, I'm sure, find it rather annoying when a project gets part way through development and decides to either abandon or haphazardly throw together a quick ending to a project, so they can start anew with better visuals... Same with changing the visuals part way through, before going back and updating the prior content first... It's understandable that as a developer grows, they learn new things or gain new partners... But be consistent, and be aware of detrimental changes and decisions that may have unforeseen consequences... Visuals can be a big part of any project, and you will always have some folks in the visual camp who are only playing/reading VN/Games in this market, so they can masturbate... But most folks are typically looking for the complete package, something to entertain as well as being erotic... Decent visuals alongside decent story telling, well developed characters, fun plots, and so on... The games you mentioned, even though story is not their main focus, everything else meshes together enough as a complete package to get more folks to pay attention to them... None of them are perfect... Perfection is rare in this market, as it is dependent on the perspectives of the players/readers...

Best thing you can do, if you decide to go forward with getting your feet wet in this market... Is to use what VN/Games you've read/played as base line inspiration... Then come up with your own unique ideas, and experiment with the various tools to see if you can put something together... It doesn't even need to be the actual project you eventually want to develop... Put it out into the public domain, just to get a feel for what people think of it, both good and bad... Call it an experiment rather then a demo or intro... Learn from that experience, and then actually begin a full project of your own...

If you ever do begin your own project, my biggest suggestions would be, at minimum, keep it somewhat unique, plan it all out ahead of time in the form of notes and scribble (better yet you can make an outline and maybe story board), keep to your guns and don't let fans dictate much if anything (such as plot devices, story direction, character development, scenes/events, fetishes used, etc), listen to critics (take in what they have to say good and bad, and ignore what you will), and have fun doing it... If it becomes too much work and is no longer any fun, then what is the point?

Zip