What's your favorite way games implement love vs corruption routes?

[Deleted member 1952336]

What's your favorite way games implement love vs corruption routes?

Some examples:

• A single choice in the beginning, for each girl's route, like Four Elements Trainer.
• A point system where choices push you towards one route or another.
• On going choices, where you can switch back and forth.
• Games where all the writing/music choices/art is fully focused on catering to either love or corruption, depending on the game.
• Stories that start out as love and then later have corruption options like Hotel Harem.

As a developer, I messed this up in one of my earlier games, with random choices that sometimes let the MC do something out of character and no clear distinctions, so I wanted to hear people's opinions and thoughts.

 

[tanstaafl]

My favorite way is probably the hardest to implement. The closest to your options would be the "Ongoing choices" options. But I don't really like swapping back and forth, but instead a gradual decent into corruption or a gradual ascent into love. The trick is to be able to stop the progression at a point you are happy with and be able to move forward with the game all the way at that level. Which is nearly impossible as the dialogue and even renders required for that level of granularity would be prohibitive.

Edit: Example - If going the corruption route the ability to stop the corruption at a point above full on cock sleeve, but somewhere around where they become cock worshipers.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

No interest in romance. If anything, I prefer it if the corruptor and corruptee have a mutual hatred or antagonism.

 

[YSP=]

My favorite way is probably the hardest to implement. The closest to your options would be the "Ongoing choices" options. But I don't really like swapping back and forth, but instead a gradual decent into corruption or a gradual ascent into love. The trick is to be able to stop the progression at a point you are happy with and be able to move forward with the game all the way at that level. Which is nearly impossible as the dialogue and even renders required for that level of granularity would be prohibitive.

Edit: Example - If going the corruption route the ability to stop the corruption at a point above full on cock sleeve, but somewhere around where they become cock worshipers.

I can see that working with a point system where it is transparent to the player so they can keep corruption within a given range. Or where even having enough points that just unlocks the option to go farther.

 

[tanstaafl]

I can see that working with a point system where it is transparent to the player so they can keep corruption within a given range. Or where even having enough points that just unlocks the option to go farther.

Agreed, the hard part would still be creating the personality (dialogue, actions, etc) to match each level of corruption or love that the player might want to stop at.

 

[Meaning Less]

I would say stick to one of them depending on the game you are going for, making a single good love or corruption route is hard enough, having both sounds unfeasible as you will basically be developing two different games.

My prefered style is probably how it is done in games like Corruption where you have many different events on each level of corruption and you can explore and see how the character corruption influenced their daily life by talking to them and exploring the map as long as you want before progressing to the next level.
The exact same system is used on Sweet Affection but for the love route.

 

[Mathesar]

Separate meters that develop in parallel, like Rogue-like Evolution. Lets you have love route, corrupt route, and loving but corrupted route. Unfortunately, that's pretty rare.

 

[khumak]

For me the big one is that the effects of your choices should make sense and there should be enough wiggle room built into whatever system you use to fix your mistakes without having to follow a walkthrough or reload. If I have to either refer to a walkthrough or memorize which seemingly random choices are the right choice and which ones are the wrong choice then I'm either going to lose interest, follow a walkthrough and ignore the story, or cheat my way to the sex scenes and ignore the story.

Also for corruption specifically, I prefer to see a girl corrupted by combining something she already likes with whatever you're trying to corrupt her into doing. It just makes more sense that way than the more typical formula that most devs seem to do which is repeat something she doesn't like until she magically starts to like it.

 

[desmosome]

The important thing is character consistency. This is an excercise in writing as much as it is for coding and route planning.

Some systems are, of course, easier for the developer. My favorite is a dynamic system with variables and flags to determine the characters' disposition and motivations, but this is the hardest way to do it.