Your Opinion on having Rival/Antagonist in game ?

[DarknessDai]

do you Like having these in games ? someone who is trying to prevent you from getting with the girls or himself trying to beat you to it ? i know i know people love fucking every girl they meet without any consequence that's why Harem games exist but outside of it i like the games better for myself if it was made real girls have their own life / personality if u try with girl and ignore that other she will look for herself but today any sex outside the MC is considered NTR , so what do u think ? is it better to have this or just the normal way ?

 

[paust.alex]

As you correctly wrote, that would be NTR. Again, not for every normal girl, a prerequisite for a successful life is to lose her virginity by the age of 16, have atleast 100 + partners by 30 and get divorced several times. They might as well live with cats, if such a great and wonderful guy like the MC doesn't choose them. After all, it's better to live alone than with an ordinary piece of shit.

 

[DawnCry]

As a game it's better to have some kind of antagonist/rival to beat, especially if it isn't a visual novel style but rather kind of sandbox. The reason is that it adds a decent gameplay element.

Personally I always find it more fun to earn the harem rather than just following a really meh storyline with no other possible endings.

 

[Avaron1974]

I would prefer games worked in a way that girls have their own lives. There are a couple of games like that with devs that stick to their guns.

I used to enjoy harem games but started getting bored of them. It's not that I find it "too easy" to get the women it's that they are all exactly the same.

There are a few exceptions to the rule like Sisterly Lust and Parental Love where the girls have their own thing going on with each other inside of the harem. Everyone is included. It's games like WVM and MNF I started to get bored of. Nothing against them it's a me thing. I just find the whole only the MC will ever do anything and the girls queue up waiting for their turn thing to be bland as fuck.

As for rivals, they only really work if the story is geared for them.

Just putting a rival in a game doesn't instantly add any interest nor does it make it realistic. NTR as it stands isn't something that's ever going to bother me. I'm not male so i'm not self inserting as these charaters therefore it's not "me" being cucked. It doesn't give any feelings of jealousy etc...

However adding other male or female characters that potential love interests can get with if the MC doesn't choose them does interest me. That makes the game feel more realistic and "alive" if you will.

 

[DawnCry]

However adding other male or female characters that potential love interests can get with if the MC doesn't choose them does interest me. That makes the game feel more realistic and "alive" if you will.

100% agreed. This is something that I started to think after playing some visual novels in which all the characters had traumas and stuff. When I was playing the route of a character I was like... my god I know the current circunstances of X, game help her!, but no one did.

It did leave me a bad aftertaste.

 

[ClickerQueen]

i know i know people love fucking every girl they meet without any consequence

No, I hate this. In fact, it's kind of interesting to me if there are some characters that are just completely unavailable. Mix it up. Something. I think Being A Dik made me really appreciate the silly sidekick character, but a well-written rival would definitely be interesting.

I don't really understand why anyone would enjoy a bunch of copy-pasted character tropes that all end up submitting themselves to the same MC. Maybe I've just played a whole lot of these games and I need something interesting.

I agree with a lot of what Avaron said.

I'm playing Once in a Lifetime right now, and the story is actually pretty engaging. But I feel like the harem doesn't have much tie-in with the rest of the plot. The villain wants to kill me, but doesn't care at all about the rest of the characters, so it's just switching between advancing bases with the girls and then solving this other grand mystery. At least the girls have personality, but it would be kind of cool to have the plot be more relevant to my relationships with them.

 

[Carrera]

If the story requires an antagonist NPC then fine. If not then fine.

I don't choose a game based on that, I choose a game based on if it sounds interesting.

OH, and NTR is not about having sex outside of the MC. NTR is about the emotional impact of someone you care about sleeping with someone else. Doesn't matter if there's any relationship between the MC whether male or female. If the MC doesn't care that another NPC is having sex, then it's not NTR.

Ehh,,, I didn't explain that well enough, but it's been explained far to often anyway and the fact people still think NTR just equates to any flavor of cheating is just getting stupid and I'm in a foul mood today so fuck it.

 

[DarknessDai]

thank you all for sharing your thoughts and opinion with me

 

[khumak]

IMO if MC has nothing to struggle against then there's not much of a story. An antagonist is the best means of providing that IMO. That's why even if I don't ever want to see the bad guy win, I still want him there in pretty much every story. The good guy needs someone to defeat.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I would prefer games worked in a way that girls have their own lives.

I agree, the "I do absolutely nothing of my life when the MC isn't talking to me" personality is quickly boring.

If the girls have a life, and this said life do not resolve solely around "being MC's onahole", then a male antagonist isn't necessarily needed. Each girl becoming then both a goal and an antagonist ; the MC will have to deal with their life and, what would be even better, understand their personality, before he can get in their pants.

As for rivals, they only really work if the story is geared for them.

From what OP said, I imagine more the kind of scenario where there's simply no story.
There a MC, there's girls, and to compensate the lack of story, there's an antagonist that also want the girls. But this, "I need to get the girls before he get them" story is as flat as the initial, "I need to get the girls because I want it". It potentially give a reason to advance in the game, but at this level of minimalism, the same game without antagonist would be better ; it wouldn't be more interesting, but at least it would be less frustrating.

Just putting a rival in a game doesn't instantly add any interest nor does it make it realistic.

And WVM, that you named (not without reason) as boring, is the perfect example of that.
It have a story with an antagonist, but it's something that happen in parallel of the harem quest. The two are totally unrelated ; the antagonist don't care a single second about the girls, while the events due to the story do not prevent the MC to fuck all the girls he had to fuck this day. The sole consequences that the story have in the harem quest are always positive ; the MC had a reason to move into a bigger house where he'll be able to host even more of his brainless groupies, while the said groupies are even more craving to become his thing ; what by itself is an exploit.
In the end, the story parasite the harem quest, by artificially slowing it down, while the flatness of the harem quest tend to let the player disillusioned when the game goes back to the story. But well, the game can be took at the second degree, and one can simply wait to discover what will be the next Deus Ex Machina that the author will throw out of his hat.

However adding other male or female characters that potential love interests can get with if the MC doesn't choose them does interest me. That makes the game feel more realistic and "alive" if you will.

Hmm, knowing you I feel the need to complete your thought, because as it, it can be misunderstood.
This other character isn't to see as an antagonist, but more as a "second option". Not only it isn't a single character, each girl of the story having her own "second option", but also the MC isn't directly in competition with him.
Whatever if it's a friend or a co-worker, it's someone that flirt with the girl, so far without success. But if the MC isn't showing interest in the girl, or is doing to many stupid things, she'll start to see it as a potential lover. In short, it's the proof that she isn't just waiting for the MC to get in her pants ; she have a life by herself, and if the nearest person (the MC) isn't interested in her, she'll find someone else.
It can also be used as a way to make the MC speed-up his game. A simple, and totally innocent from the point of view of the girl, "Oh, no tomorrow I can't, Alan invited the team to a karaoke night. You should see him trying to sing, it's so funny", can be seen as a potential future threat ; some kind of warning, "take more care of her, you idiot, she isn't just standing there waiting for you to make a move".

 

[Avaron1974]

Hmm, knowing you I feel the need to complete your thought, because as it, it can be misunderstood.
This other character isn't to see as an antagonist, but more as a "second option". Not only it isn't a single character, each girl of the story having her own "second option", but also the MC isn't directly in competition with him.
Whatever if it's a friend or a co-worker, it's someone that flirt with the girl, so far without success. But if the MC isn't showing interest in the girl, or is doing to many stupid things, she'll start to see it as a potential lover. In short, it's the proof that she isn't just waiting for the MC to get in her pants ; she have a life by herself, and if the nearest person (the MC) isn't interested in her, she'll find someone else.

Exactly this, thankyou for explaining it better than I did, hun.

I think it's Leap of Faith that has the best version of this.

Chris is the MC's best friend, they have been friends for years no rivalry just friendship. They have another female friend called Linda. She is a potential love interest for the MC however if you are going for one of the other girls, and because it isn't a harem game, you have the option of helping Chris get together with Linda.

I believe Devil in Your Eyes has a similar thing going on.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Chris is the MC's best friend, they have been friends for years no rivalry just friendship. They have another female friend called Linda. She is a potential love interest for the MC however if you are going for one of the other girls, and because it isn't a harem game, you have the option of helping Chris get together with Linda.

What is the way it should be for all games ; simply because it's the way it is in life. Too many games have a MC's bff that just stand there, never showing interest in the girls, while he's totally transparent for the said girls. And the worse part is that generally his way smarter, and less a jerk, than the MC.
The only exception happen if the game is an incest game. But even then the only girl he'll be potentially interested by will be his own mother. The fuck, most, if not all, boys fantasized about their best friend mother and sister(s), and it's the same for girls, with their best friend father and brother(s) ; correct the genders accordingly to your sexual orientation. And it's probable that at some point the said sister(s)/brother(s) also fantasized about the said best friend.
But no, not in the adult games universes. This universal law purely based on the overflowing hormones in any teenager brain, do not apply in adult games universes. The best friend in those universes is always asexual and invisible to any character of the opposite sex.

 

[C.L.A.N]

If you're making a story-based game, and not just another sex scenes clicker, then you must have a conflict in your story. The antagonist is the representation of that conflict, it's an obstacle that the player must overcome to get something/someone desired. The prize is valuable only if there's a challenge, that's why we have monsters, quests, and puzzles in games. So yeah, having an antagonist in your game creates conflict, which makes a player more involved in solving the problem and contributes to a more fun gaming experience.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Honestly, I've yet to enjoy a game that had this (i.e. where you have the means to fight against the "stealer"). As an NTR fiend, I like the concept of Leane 2 where failure gets your female party members stolen and corrupted one by one, yet the Japanese-ness of it has kept me away. But western games are even worse - I actively dislike Big Brother and The Guy in Charge, for example.