Can Too Many Choices Ruin Your VN Reading Experience?

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, TomokoKuroki said:

 

Bad endings can be entertaining but are mostly a bummer. Especially because you get too invested on the characters, so when something bad happens, you feel like crap later.

I like Bad Ends, I feel like they break the "plot armor" of the protagonist a lot, since this time they can actually Fail or Die, also Bad Ends are a good way to see how despair and other negative feelings can affect the characters you like (look at Dmmd for example, this Visual Novel has very awesome Bad Ends). 

[Silvz]

1 hour ago, SeniorBlitz said:

Sound of Drop have colored choices to them and also it's pretty easy to figure out which choice is the one that leads to the bad end (with so exceptions), I dunno about MYTH, but I remember you requesting me to make a walktrough for this specific Novel, I eventually go around to play it and make a walktrough for it, I just need to finish other Vns and also deal with some personal life garbage...

The "problem" with SoD is not about the choices exactly, since they are sometimes very obvious and all bad endings were right after choosing. It is the high ammount of them that is the problem. It is a relatively short VN, and the choices/endings were too close to each other, to the point you'd have two in less than half an hour, and not all of them were relevant to the game.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Silvz said:

The "problem" with SoD is not about the choices exactly, since they are sometimes very obvious and all bad endings were right after choosing. It is the high ammount of them that is the problem. It is a relatively short VN, and the choices/endings were too close to each other, to the point you'd have two in less than half an hour, and not all of them were relevant to the game.

Yeah, some Bad Ends just felt like Game Overs, SoD would have been a longer game (at least a medium 10-30 hour VN) the plot could've been more detailed and the Bad Ends better positioned, but, it's a relatively good game at it's own merits.   

[Akshay]

4 hours ago, ittaku said:

Glad to be of service.

I hate pointless choices that make no difference to the game, but even more I hate choices that do make a difference to the game but there is no logical connection with the outcome based on the choice. I'm too old to take any enjoyment whatsoever out of bad endings too so that pretty much leaves me with only Alcot type choice selections - make 3 choices in total which ends up choosing which heroine's good end you get and there is no bad end.

Some bad endings are really good though, like in grisaia, and even the ones in fate can be very interesting.

[Nandemonai]

I still think Yuka's bad ending in Crescendo is - while certainly not nearly as happy as her real ending - much better written.

As for choices in games, they can certainly go overboard.  In recent games they've more or less stopped doing this, but in older games the choice structures were often extremely cryptic.

Snow Drop, for example, is actually a significant challenge, but not in a good way.  Aside from a handful of traditional choices, there's a lot of "where do I spend time" choices.  The game gives no guidance to its mechanics; you simply pick a destination, and there's either a scene there or not.  It doesn't tell you each choice has its own list of avaialble events, which aren't available for very long.  It also doesn't tell you that if you somewhere and nothing happens, time advances anyway (which probably makes it impossible to get to the real second half of the game).  Some of the actual events are also a waste of time, because not all of them are required to get to the second half.  You have to hit every event that the game wants you to hit, with little idea of which events those are and no indication when you've already missed an important event.

Tokimeki Checkin! is another one with a crazy "route structure".  Unlike in most modern games, where the choices are pretty well telegraphed as to who they're getting you closer to (if they aren't literally "pick your pizza" like Princess Evangile), the choices in this one are pretty random.  Granted, I hadn't been playing for very long, so it took me awhile to cotton on that all I had to do was figure out which choices led me to interact with the girl I wanted.  But still.  That game basically requires saving at every choice, because there's no way you can figure out which option does what.

Neither one of these two games is a good usage of choice in a VN.  I guess the best one I've seen so far would be Littlewitch Romanesque. That one doesn't have a lot of conventional choices, but it still has a lot of choice.  Choice in how to build the two mages, and which quests you do, which affects the endings you can get in mostly obvious ways.  Edit: Oh, and how could I forget Soul Link?  The first half actually makes very excellent use of a great number of choices, by making the protag kind of a badass, and actually making you pick how he approaches a given situation, and if you do stupid shit, then you die.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Nandemonai

[mitchhamilton]

2 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

I still think Yuka's bad ending in Crescendo is - while certainly not nearly as happy as her real ending - much better written.

oh? is that the ending where

Spoiler

she becomes an adult film star and meets the mc years later in a bar?

 

[Nandemonai]

Close, but not quite.

They don't exactly "meet in a bar".  I mean, technically, it probably is a bar.  But they meet at a class reunion, and it's really interesting to see that play out.  I mean, people who graduate and go on to an illustrious career in adult cinema typically aren't the sort to put in an appearance at a high school reunion, right?

[littleshogun]

As for mine, I think most of VN player (Including me) would likely use the walkthrough so I think the answer would be relative to how annoyed people to check the walkthrough several times. As for mine, I wouldn't say my experience was ruined if I did thatbut rather it was a small annoyance when I did tried Clannad and there's many choice to go to Nagisa's route, therefore make me check the walkthrough several times. Anyway, from my observation I think most VN player in the past was complaining that they had too much choice and therefore make it confusing, so nowadays we see many VNs had lesser choice compared to the past VNs.

[TheColdCaseOfNoellaBejerot]

I always hated getting bad ends in every vn I played and would always have to look up online guides to get the good end cause it was the only end I wanted to see haha. But! When I started writing a bad end for the vn I'm working on, I realized I could show a different side of my characters. So now in my good end one character goes through a major character development but in my bad end, a different character goes through a development. I think the key thing to different endings shouldn't be a punishment on the player for not getting enough affection points with their love interest but it should be a chance to show different areas where your plot could develop. That way every ending is exciting to get even if it’s "bad"

Edited October 12, 2017 by TheColdCaseOfNoellaBejerot

[Guest]

2 hours ago, TheColdCaseOfNoellaBejerot said:

I always hated getting bad ends in every vn I played and would always have to look up online guides to get the good end cause it was the only end I wanted to see haha. But! When I started writing a bad end for the vn I'm working on, I realized I could show a different side of my characters. So now in my good end one character goes through a major character development but in my bad end, a different character goes through a development. I think the key thing to different endings shouldn't be a punishment on the player for not getting enough affection points with their love interest but it should be a chance to show different areas where your plot could develop. That way every ending is exciting to get even if it’s "bad"

Agreed.

[Funyarinpa]

Thing is, a lot of visual novels just go with having obtuse choices to raise some behind-the-scenes flags that you can't see-- eventually most people (including me) just give up and go use a walkthrough. This is obviously far worse with VNs that sport a whole fucking bunch of choices.

The worst that comes to mind is Root Double. RD features a choice system where every character concerned with a choice has a meter and you pick a level between 1-8 for each, but it's never clearly or intuitively defined what the meter identifies. The protagonist's trust? Respect? Just a measure of how much of their attention is on the concerned character? It keeps changing and it's really frustrating, even with the tips you get when you reach a bad ending.

[Nandemonai]

Yeah, Root Double is another example of how not to do it.  They give you a meter that runs from 0-8, but for almost all the choices in the game, it only counts "low", "meduim", or "high".  3, 5, or 7 work almost all the time.

[Zakamutt]

I didn't find root double's way of doing it frustrating at all really, since you were really only ever 1 hint corner from getting through it. I actually liked that system, and I disliked both the choice maze of clannad and the vagueness of s;g...

I really dislike having to use a walkthrough and this has caused me to drop at least one vn (kara no shoujo).

[Nandemonai]

Why give you the option of going from 0-8 if they only ever used 3 values?  Why not just "low", "medium", and "high"?  That's what's dumb.

As for Kara no Shoujo, I am convinced there is a bug in one of the investigation scenes.  If you investigate certain parts of the scene in the wrong order, you don't find a key piece of evidence, and you're boned.  There appears to be no good reason for this.

Edited October 13, 2017 by Nandemonai

[Jamie D.W.]

It's kind of fun, actually. Having a lot of possibilities and finding them yourself is what I'm always looking for in a VN, especially if there are gameplay elements added in.

But therein lies the problems you just mentioned. One thing that personally bugs is whether or not the route that the choice leads to isn't interesting enough to hold water. It still has to make sense to the plot (unless it's intentionally, non-sequitir, that is).

[TomokoKuroki]

On 11/10/2017 at 9:55 PM, SeniorBlitz said:

I like Bad Ends, I feel like they break the "plot armor" of the protagonist a lot, since this time they can actually Fail or Die, also Bad Ends are a good way to see how despair and other negative feelings can affect the characters you like (look at Dmmd for example, this Visual Novel has very awesome Bad Ends). 

True, they can be really cool. But sometimes you don't wanna see characters die or something bad happening :'(

Edited October 16, 2017 by TomokoKuroki

[Guest]

On 16/10/2017 at 2:17 AM, TomokoKuroki said:

True, they can be really cool. But sometimes you don't wanna see characters die or something bad happening :'(

Yeah...

[ChaosRaven]

Usually I like choices because it gives me the feeling to have control over the outcome of the story, which increases the immersion. On the other hand, too frequent or too nonesensical choices can certainly hamper the experience. And too many can be very annoying if you have to backtrack for different routes.

Besides Root Double's extra creative choice system, a particular bad choice combination I've seen in several VN's this year are choices which aren't exclusive. That means you get several choices but you'll just select them one after another. That's pretty much the epitome of nonsensical.

Choices in general either influence the outcome of the story or are just flavour. While the former are usually the best, the latter can also be good if they make you identfy better with the protagonist. Such flavour choices are also very typical in western RPG's like the ones from Bioware.

Very common choices in VN's are also map movement or location selections, often seen in dating sims to pick a certain heroine. But it's also common in Kara no Shojo like mystery games. And in contrast to common believe most of those choices are not deciding but pure flavor are also just heroine selection. And that's something I dislike about many walkthroughs: they often just show you one possible path and make you think that if you just make one different choice, it'll lead to a bad or different end. But those game are made to enjoy the freedom of choice and a walkthrough will make you feel on rails. The better walkthroughs will therefore mark the key choices that really influence the story and not just show you one way to max CG's as fast as possible.

Walkthroughs should only be used if you got stuck, for CG completion or as a 'rough' guideline, otherwise they'll often just lower the enjoyment instead of increasing it.

Edited October 17, 2017 by ChaosRaven

[Guest]

3 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

 

Walkthroughs should only be used if you got stuck, for CG completion or as a 'rough' guideline, otherwise they'll often just lower the enjoyment instead of increasing it.

...Unless you're people like me and others that prefer to "Read" visual novels than to "Play" them, but I understand what ya' mean and I somewhat agree with it.

[Nandemonai]

9 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

Walkthroughs should only be used if you got stuck, for CG completion or as a 'rough' guideline, otherwise they'll often just lower the enjoyment instead of increasing it.

I was talking to some cousins of mine once years ago about Zelda: Twilight Princess.  They said they loved the game.  So I asked something like "Oh yeah? Which part gave you the most trouble?" and they told me "well, uh, we actually have a guide, and we just use the guide to play the game."

I thought this was crazy, and was like "But all the fun is figuring all that stuff out for yourself.  How is it any fun to use a walkthrough?"  They didn't really have a good answer other than "I dunno, I just like the game."

There's no one right way to use a walkthrough.  The trick is to figure out what works for you, and do it.  Or I guess, figure out what doesn't work for you, and then don't.

[GoldenPincers]

Quote

Usually I like choices because it gives me the feeling to have control over the outcome of the story, which increases the immersion.

While I have played only very few VNs, I agree with that. I see immersion as something important in a VN, which of course can also be done with few choices, if the story and characters are good, but easier when there are many choices.

I recently played a VN called 11eyes, decently long. I've only completed 1 route so far, but I really liked how it has many choices... a whole 40 of them... 23 of which can lead to the MC's death. Now, for some people, this case might be going too far, as 40 choices is a lot and over half of them being bad ends can be discouraging, but I found it really fun, trying to best to stay alive (for some of them, the correct choice is hinted, other times no. I still died 4 times). I liked this high amount of choices because most of them either affect the girl you end up, certain plot points, or whether the MC lives or dies, so none are meaningless. Also, experiencing the VN blind on the first read increases the immersion and enjoyment, I believe, than if you played with a walkthrough open.

The downside is that, because of all these choices, unlocking every single CG, text and scenario becomes a long and perhaps tiring quest for many people. I myself am not sure when or if I will ever complete everything on such a VN. On the one hand, I like having my games cleared the closest to 100% I can, but on the other, I am a pretty lazy person. So I'm really thankful of walkthroughs to help complete the VN, when they exist. In the end, if I come across another many-choice VN, I'm not fully sure if I will go blind again, as there are many VNs I want to read, but my laziness might prevent me from coming back to them to complete them.

I just realized I actually agree with both Chaos and Senior here xD

Edited November 8, 2017 by GoldenPincers

[Plk_Lesiak]

On 11.10.2017 at 4:02 PM, Mr Poltroon said:

Too many choices will never ruin my VN experience, provided some walkthroughs exist out there. Even if guides do not exist, I will only become exasperated with the visual novel if the game does not give me feedback and the choice system possesses a lot of complexity or too few acceptable choice combinations to progress.

^ This. The number of choices and routes is never a problem for me, even when I don't have enough time to explore a VN fully, I usually know what outcomes are a priority to me and what I can leave for repeated playthroughts in the future or skip entirely.

What I don't like are overly specific choice combinations and counter-intuitive consequences that screw me over against common sense. That's why I like VNs with simple structure, that work more like an interactive book that a contrived logic puzzle that actively try to f**** with you (hello School Days with your minor choices leading to absurd, horrible outcomes). And why I never approach the latter without a walkthrough.

But it's also a bit pointless to complain about it, confusing choice/route structures are a constant feature of VNs since forever, I don't see it changing any time soon. Obviously the game might have tons of contrived, branching paths that add little substance and are simply boring, but I can't say I've seen much of that. The biggest, most complex VNs are usually made by teams that know their craft well and keep pretty consistent quality throughout the whole thing.