Seeking opinions on a game design idea.

[Wolfschadowe]

As I'm reworking the interface and logic of the game into the new engine, I've been thinking about the overall game flow and gameplay. One of the problems with the current format is that for the "Elite" and "Corruption" paths, there is a lot of knowledge needed about the women that is not possible to have until later game details are learned. This leads to a brute force approach to finding all the paths.

What I'm talking about here is an old D&D concept of "Player Knowledge" vs. "Character Knowledge." A quick example of this is if you are playing with a group and your characters are all supposed to be a close-knit team. If the Rogue character checks for traps and says no traps are there, then the characters should all trust that the Rogue was right. But what if the players know that the Rogue player rolled a 1 on the check, meaning that the check failed, and traps might be present? Well, good D&D players should ignore the failed check and trust the rogue's words, and play their characters accordingly, because their characters don't know the Player failed the check. Others might hesitate.

The reason I'm talking about it here, is because the Elite paths were originally intended to be played with full player knowledge of each woman's personality after a full playthrough of at least one of the standard paths. That's when the choices of the elite paths would make sense. Same goes for the Corruption paths, which would need knowledge of the women's personalities learned through the Elite paths. The explanation is that the character, Brad, would get knowledge late game, and think back to earlier choices saying "I wish I knew that two days ago, I could have taken that risk and filled that fantasy for her" or something similar. As a player, on the next playthrough, we might see the opportunity as one of Brad's choices and though the character Brad would choose the "safer" choice, as the player we might have Brad take a chance on a "riskier" choice that we know is better because of the "Player knowledge" of the previous playthrough.

So, after all the blah, blah above to give context, I'm trying to decide if it would be beneficial to focus on the standard paths first for 1 or 2 of the women, from day one to day seven, and begin layering in the other paths with future episodes. At the same time, lock out the elite paths for the women until a standard path has been completed at least once, and then open the elite paths for that woman, and after an elite path has been completed, the corruption paths open.

I'm just not sure if the idea makes sense or not.

[infiniteignorance]

It makes sense. Let's be real. Not only do you not figure out women the first week you never figure them out.
But at least you can say you should know more about them after a month than you do after a week.
That's just logical.

[Wolfschadowe]

But at least you can say you should know more about them after a month than you do after a week.

Yeah, that's kind of what's behind my thought process. It might just be me, but there have been times in my life, especially when I was younger, when I took a safer route and missed some fun opportunities. There have been a few times where I've later had conversations with women who later say that they were interested the exact things I wanted to ask, but we both chose a "safer" more conservative route. Usually this occurs when the original thing is no longer appropriate or possible. That's kind of the idea behind Elite paths, the ability to "redo" a decision based on later knowledge simulated in the game as replay ability.

[dutch]

i'll submit an idea for criticism . Rather then try to control the flow of the game path by each answer would it be possible to randomize some of the reactions to the players choices. So that a pass through might take route A the first time but a question along that path has a random factor so that the same input a second time might led you down path b or c. This would frustrate the brute force folks but it could make the game more unpredictable and thus perhaps more fun? After all unpredictable is one of the things looked for in interesting women right?

[Wolfschadowe]

Rather then try to control the flow of the game path by each answer would it be possible to randomize some of the reactions to the players choices.

It would be possible and I've thought of this. There are some areas of the game where this might work out, but there can be so much frustration involved that it would have to be limited to non-essential routes. An example would be mixing up a lengthy conversation where player decisions don't matter, but different information is given.

The overall goal is not to try and thwart the brute force players. If someone really wants to play that way, I say go for it. Have fun in your own way. Right now, with the current release process, brute force trial and error is required to see everything because the needed information hasn't been released yet. I simply want to take away the requirement by altering the release schedule.

[JFR]

As long as we don't get back to how many times Brad blinks in the taxi, I'm fine.

[infiniteignorance]

Rather then try to control the flow of the game path by each answer would it be possible to randomize some of the reactions to the players choices.

It would be possible and I've thought of this. There are some areas of the game where this might work out, but there can be so much frustration involved that it would have to be limited to non-essential routes. An example would be mixing up a lengthy conversation where player decisions don't matter, but different information is given.

The overall goal is not to try and thwart the brute force players. If someone really wants to play that way, I say go for it. Have fun in your own way. Right now, with the current release process, brute force trial and error is required to see everything because the needed information hasn't been released yet. I simply want to take away the requirement by altering the release schedule.

There would be no point to saving the game at any particular place if whatever occurred before the save was random.

[hojohn]

So, this is like Brad plays through the game and at the end, in addition to whatever the ending is, he finds a time machine pre-programmed to take him back to Day 1 with the message - "It could have been so, so different if only you had known... ".

[Wolfschadowe]

So, this is like Brad plays through the game and at the end, in addition to whatever the ending is, he finds a time machine pre-programmed to take him back to Day 1 with the message - "It could have been so, so different if only you had known... ".

Haha, maybe.

Perhaps a better way to think of it is that the player is Brad's "intuition" or "gut feeling" in some ways. On a first playthrough Brad's intuition is not that great, because we as the players don't know much about the women and it's harder to get a feel for them (and on them, I guess. ) After a full playthrough with Emily, us players should have a better overall understanding of her, and so in the next playthrough, as players we might understand some offered choices better. I've tried to give depth to all the main and supporting characters in the game. I'm not sure how to explain it without a spoiler example. So, in spoiler there is an example of one aspect regarding Emily that we learn in other parts of the game. It is a mild spoiler regarding Emily's characterization, so if you don't want to know, don't expand it.

spoiler: show

• In the early game, we are supposed to begin seeing Emily as a bit conservative and boring.
• As we learn more about her relationship with her fiancé, we learn that they rarely had sex, and that he is her one and only experience. (Hinted at when picking up Emily in her Apartment.)
• We learn that she has an enormous sex drive and craving, fueled by rich fantasies. Not talking nymphomaniac levels here, but you get the Idea. She's pretty much always horny, but tries to keep it locked away because it's not proper to her.
• We learn that she was raised in a very conservative and religious household where any sex outside of marriage and reproduction was sinful.
• All of the above leads has led to her relying on a lot of masturbation. (Hinted in day 2 office)
• It was during college that she broke free of her ultra-conservative upbringing, moving more towards the middle ground.
• later On some elite paths, and in an unreleased bonus scene, we learn that in college she crushed hard on a small redheaded woman who lived in the dorm room across the hall from her but because of her upbringing and boyfriend (now fiancé) felt too much guilt and fear to approach her or even talk to her apart from passing greetings. Any guesses who reminds her of this college crush?

It would take several playthroughs to gain all this knowledge about Emily, and what I listed is only a small amount of what we will discover about Emily but having this knowledge should make it a lot easier to understand the impact of game choices on later playthroughs. Knowing the deeper desires and character traits should help to find the harder paths without relying on trial and error. What I listed might also help to understand some of her reactions in the bar scene, for example. So Brad has better intuition on how Emily will react to being held, or Faith watching, or whatever.

[palinathas]

I'm seeking clarification on how you see this working in game.

Would your first play through the game give you limited options, and then after completing the game to a certain point (representing knowledge learned) would new options appear at choice points?

Or would all options be present from the start, but not work "as expected" to those who already have the knowledge? Requiring a second (or more!) playthrough to allow all options to be explored.

Or would all options be present and working from the start, but on subsequent playthroughs (New Game+) a certain choice might be highlighted or indicated as something special?

[Wolfschadowe]

Would your first play through the game give you limited options, and then after completing the game to a certain point (representing knowledge learned) would new options appear at choice points?

This would be the method, but it wouldn't be as hard hitting as it seems for current experienced players. To go along with this, the episodes would be path based instead of scene based like they were in the past, which means individual path stories would advance faster. At some point, there may be voting rounds where there's a first vote for the woman focused in the next episode, and then a second vote for which of the available story paths to advance for the selected woman. Each advancement might be an entire day for that path instead of just through a scene.

Although it wasn't initially planned, a happy accident is that many of the sub-Achievements for endings/activities handled knowledge points, so that system can very easily be reworked to unlock options. In spoiler is an example of how it would work based on known game content and my earlier spoiler in this thread:

spoiler: show

Currently, in the Wednesday Bar scene (Day 1) when Faith is watching Brad and Emily, Brad has the option to suggest asking Faith to join. That came in Episode 1.
In the new format, Episode 1 would contain the part where Faith is watching, but the option and content for Faith joining wouldn't exist, and neither would the content. Based on what we know of Emily's character from Episode 1 alone, it doesn't make any sense that Emily would even consider allowing Faith to join her on the couch with Brad.
If we assume that the player learns about Emily's university crush in Episode 5 which might be in day 5 of Emily's main story. Then the option to add the content of Faith joining might become available to vote on, but it might be listed as "Add Emily story path associated with the university crush knowledge." Let's say that Path is Episode 7, so in Episode 7, Brad has the option to suggest, and it makes sense to the player, but the option is still only there for those who triggered the knowledge on Day 5. New players still wouldn't see the option yet. Depending on how much that unlocks in total, that might add content ranging from day 1 - day 3 in a single episode, and it will bring more unlocks as well.

The result would be that for long time players, a lot of the game will feel locked off at first, but at the same time, new unseen content will come much faster. For new players, the choices and decisions will make a lot more sense, and there will be less of a feeling of trial and error. In a way, the game almost becomes a roguelike, but I hesitate to make that comparison.

I've always wanted to include more community participation in what content comes next, and I think this method would also help that a lot. The game has released in a way that could be called very wide and short bursts, and it felt like no progress in the stories is being made. The new method would be more narrow and long. Similar amounts of content in total, but with a better feeling of progression.

I expect I would also keep control and flow through voting options. For example, If Faith keeps winning the focus vote, I might exclude her from the next vote to give others a chance to catch up on thier favorites. If each vote for the focus is 3 of the 8, for example, then I only include 3 of the 10 available storylines to continue for each of the focus, then I can guide the development and keep it somewhat balanced.

Of course, everything I've been saying is just where my thought processes and ideas are. Consider it all brainstorming as much as anything else at this point. What ends up happening could be completely different!

[Wolfschadowe]

As long as we don't get back to how many times Brad blinks in the taxi, I'm fine.

It's not how many times he blinks....it's if his hand is in the Goldilocks zone.

[moskys]

Long time no see!

Nice to see the ball keeps rolling. I'm too late to too many topics discussed this year but I do want to say something about this one.

Blocking the elite paths till the end, I personally won't find many incentives to play the game knowing some endings aren't available from the start. I get the idea that the consequences of those 'bold' decisions could be better understood after playing the regular paths, so in a replay I could choose something else cause I know I'll succeed. That's how all games work, and that replay is something you should let the player to decide. You talk in the OP about "Player Knowledge" vs. "Character Knowledge." Well, I'm all for making player knowledge = character knowledge, but I understand that as in "I don't want to face a branching point knowing something my MC can't possibly known because the game's dev has shown me something that effects this decision but my MC couldn't see it". And, actually, that's only achievable in the first playthrough. After that, the player knows what happens in the story, knows how characters act and will addapt his MC's behaviour to that info. It's not like the plot consists in a groundhog day where you reach the end and your MC is automatically sent back to the start with the memories adquired during the previous run. It's you, the player, who decide if you want to try a re-run, and then you'd connect the dots and try different options you didn't try before because you decided against them, not because they just weren't there.

Besides, sometimes in life you can take the chance without having all the info -sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but the choice is always open. So, my advice would be to make all the content available from the start. If a player makes his way to the elite ending in his first playtrough, kudos to him. I perfectly know what happened with BEW so far, with people asking for the walkthrough to the elite paths as if those paths were the only 'good' paths, but that's to be expected. People want to beat games, and people want to beat them perfectly. And when you don't get any ending (because it's a work in progress and not a finished game), getting that 'perfect path' is the closest thing to beating the game they could get. There's nothing wrong about that and that desire shouldn't be penalized by blocking that perfect path and imposing a replayability onto everybody. You'd be stealing agency from the players and that's something that never feels nice in this kind of games.

[Wolfschadowe]

Great input Moskys. Gives me a lot to think about. Thanks!

[Joeschwartz]

I second Mosky on this one.

This is a little geeky, as I've been watching a lot of youtube videos on game design lately, but have you watched "Game Maker's Toolkit" at all?

He talks about how a lot of game designers have a vision of how they want the players to play their games, and how there are different ways to encourage that particular play-style. You can force it, (like, adding time limits if you want the players to play fast, or in the case of this discussion, eliminating certain choices for Brad), or you can incentivize it (instead of adding time limits, you find some way to reward the players to play fast).

Here' the link to that particular video. I thought it was fascinating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L8vAGGitr8

In the case of what you're describing, it's a super interesting puzzle. It sounds like you want to encourage players to play "as Brad", making decisions based on their own intuitions given what they know about the characters, and enjoying themselves....only to eventually play again with their updated intuitions and then enjoy themselves even more.

That's such a cool idea! I had no idea it was intended to be played that way, but it makes sense, and I love that you're creating a game with that kind of depth (rather than the typical form which would be an obvious "lose" scenario if you don't choose just right.

I do agree with Mosky that it would feel to forced and limiting for players to only have one path on their first playthrough. If you want to encourage players to play a certain way, I bet there's ways to do that while still allowing folks to try and be as elite as possible their first go-through. Perhaps there are easter eggs you only find in the "standard" path, perhaps there are fun dialogues are character bonding moments that, while they lack sex, are fun enough or sweet enough that the player doesn't feel like they screwed it up, needing to instantly re-load. I'm not sure, but it's gotta be possible.

But, what I love about this game is the depth...that I CAN try all sorts of different approaches with the women, knowing that there could be very different outcomes. It would be disappointing to have to play it all the way through once WITHOUT that depth in order to unlock the depth.

Thanks for making such an amazing game. I'm glad you're still innovating and creating and I'm looking forward to whatever you end up creating. (yes, I'll still play it even if you do one path at a time!)