Mr. Hands

@mrhands

Sexy game(s) maker

he/him

I do UI programming for AAA games and I have opinions about adult games

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mrhands31

Mr. Hands @mrhands10/30/2023, 8:40 AM

Esther.@YesItsEsther

Aura @MOOMANiBE10/30/2023, 1:55 AM

I feel like a LOT of games that have like "friendship meters" or "relationship meters" etc confuse "becoming close with someone" with "saying whatever they want to hear" and it's such a shallow conception of Being Close With Someone that it's kind of exhausting. At least give me the impression I'm developing an actual Dynamic with someone rather than just nodding whenever they say something like that rhythm heaven wrestler

Esther.@YesItsEsther10/30/2023, 8:32 AM

I am SUPER motivated to solve this problem because I hate it.

This is perhaps my main mechanical driving force in developing video games right now. Not JUST because I love to write love stories but because I feel games have totally shot beyond the horizon of what the implementation of a relationship, with numbers and meters and ranges of interpersonal synchronicity, actually could look and feel like in games!

Current concepts of affinity and approval/disapproval are no more intricate than paragon/renegade, pass/fail. It sucks. Let's do better.

Can I say with confidence my current project magically solves this problem? Absolutely not. It CERTAINLY doesn't, and neither will my next. There are a number of weaknesses in current dating game genre mechanics and I aim to examine all of them, even if I can only 'make my mark' on these issues one step at a time.

Glad I'm not the only person looking at this pattern and wondering why are we still here?

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in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:

Kyle Bugbearstew @bugbearstew10/30/2023, 2:03 AM

PREACH!! having to look up guides on how to befriend a character makes me feel even more mentally ill than i am LOL

Lily Valeen @ItsMeLilyV10/30/2023, 2:04 AM

It's funny, but it does feel like a lot of games like this always have characters asking you questions (that they want the right answer to), but it's rarer for you to ask them questions, at least, in a traditional communicative sense, like you're trying to get to know them better?

(The one typical exception being "here is a list of 5 questions to ask this NPC, you can ask all of them with 0 risk of changing their mood or anything, it's just a segmented character dump")

Mightfo @Mightfo10/30/2023, 3:25 AM

Now i really want a game where you can ask appealing characters questions..

JP @vectorpoem10/30/2023, 3:22 PM

Character relationship mechanics were definitely one of the things I had in mind when I wrote this and yeah, making conversations feel like the opposite of a slo-mo golf meter seems like a good direction. I like the idea of every conversation being an opportunity to ask someone about something and getting a substantive answer that gives you a deeper picture of them, and there's more of those questions than you can realistically ask so there's no sense of "maxing out" or emptying a mine. More generally just getting people to stop thinking of social interactions in games as transactions or resource harvests.

katherine morayati @morayati10/30/2023, 4:10 PM

interestingly, interactive fiction games used to have the exact opposite problem -- the prevailing form of "conversation" with NPCs was to spam ASK ______ ABOUT ______ until something advanced the story, while the reverse was far less common because it required more work on the parser side than what's basically a one-turn verb

surasshu @surasshu10/30/2023, 2:09 AM

very good point... i've always wanted to see it fleshed out more. i FEEL like persona 3 did it a little bit but there's a lot of potential there. honestly i think the fact that it's almost always a side mechanic to the "actual" game hampers the possibilities a lot.

Osmose @Osmose10/30/2023, 2:13 AM

Amused thinking about Genshin Impact having a friendship meter that grows as you clear quests and fights with the character in your party, which on the surface is much more realistic to me vs random questions being asked.

Of course you have almost no opportunity to talk to these characters outside of placing them in your pocket dimension house, and then they just have an extremely shallow convo tree anyway. The relationship exp is mostly to unlock their backstory, some extra voice lines, and a custom banner at level 10.

Nic Junius @quakefultales10/30/2023, 4:25 AM

I would love games to develop relationships between characters, and closeness between characters gets flattened out into kind of generally being nice and that's kind of it. Three Houses support conversations were some of the relationship building gestured more in this direction even if most of them still ended on "we are nice to each other now"

Irenes (many)@ireneista10/30/2023, 4:27 AM

the Life Is Strange series is quite good at making it more organic. it's still a counter under the hood but not visible to the player, and based on dialogue choices.

mint @mintexists10/30/2023, 8:29 PM

woah i had no idea LiS tracked that! so cool

Irenes (many)@ireneista10/30/2023, 8:29 PM

yeah! it's why certain scenes go differently depending on whether you've laid the groundwork. fans have dumped the flowcharts.

Iro @Iro10/30/2023, 4:51 AM

all the interactions in it are bespoke so it's not quite the same thing but I really appreciated how in Amarantus no matter how much you tell Marius the Right Things he won't listen to you because he is a walking disaster

Liam Thomas @junkmail10/30/2023, 5:15 AM

narrative design is hard so we've instead created friendship meters in real life so i can get a new tool to set off my social anxiety

gwen @gwenverbsnouns10/30/2023, 5:37 AM

this is part of why i haven't finished baldur's gate. rather than feeling liking im role-playing a real character who has beliefs and values, i feel compelled to be a people-pleasing chameleon

Saltmonger @saltmonger10/30/2023, 7:51 AM

I have been puzzling over the idea of a system where you befriend people by having compatible traits, by spending time with them, and by circumstance, rather than by what you decide to say to them.

Beem @cdbeem10/30/2023, 3:03 PM

I'm really curious how one would begin to change this to be more realistic but it's a great point to bring up... it would be very complicated to plan out I'm sure! And of course some people just want a quick b-line to their person they wanna get with which I can get when it's a game lol.

Lizardguy @Lizardguy6410/30/2023, 3:24 PM

The ones I play let the meters grow by pummeling hoards of enemies with them in your party. I feel like that's a better version of the whole friendship meter thing.

kuraine @kuraine10/30/2023, 4:01 PM

more games need characters who get closer to you the more you say things they hate to hear

A Jeb With No Name @namelessWrench10/30/2023, 4:29 PM

I wrote about this in my long-lost blog about 7-8 years ago and I don't think it's gotten any better. Related, it's also annoying that usually relationships are just seen as a tier on the friend meter.

티재 @tabatkins10/31/2023, 1:51 AM

You might want to play Scarlet Hollow, btw. Besides being an excellent game in its own right, it has a complex behind-the-scenes relationship system that covers several axises of a relationship, and has people react to you appropriately. Some characters like you being agreeable, some prefer to be challenged, etc.

https://www.blacktabbygames.com/

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