Things I wish eroge would do

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#1

Things I wish eroge would do:

[list]
[]Develop a standard for storing certain configuration information in a well-defined location and format so that, when I install a new eroge, I can have it pick up configuration settings I know and like. This is partly because there are certain settings common to almost all eroge I change each time (like setting the reading speed to maximum/no wait, setting voices to continue after I click if the next line is unvoiced and lowering or raising the background volume to something sensible that I can hear but doesn’t drown out the voices) and other less common settings that occasionally have bad defaults (e.g. defaulting to turning male / protagonist voices off. They went to the expense of recording those and now I don’t even know they exist unless I happen to dig that deep into the settings menu?) For reference, GIGA already does this with their titles. I wish the companies would get together and agree on a standard so EVERY eroge can ask me if I want to import config information when I install it.[/]
[]Allow me to configure, in settings, whether or not the game goes completely silent or not when I minimise it. I know people have different preferences when it comes to this issue (I prefer my eroges to silence themselves so I don’t have to do it myself if I want to watch a video or something) but that’s precisely why it should be a setting![/]
[]Start voicing protagonists and/or male characters / minor characters more. The reason for the and/or is that I find it especially unpleasant when an otherwise voiced eroge has exchanges between unvoiced characters (in other words, lengthy exchanges of dialogue with no voicing at all.) At least when one person is voiced it still feels like a conversation.[/]
[]More eroges should store all notable events, not just H scenes, in the game’s recollection mode. There are some particular scenes that, because of my tastes in writing, I definitely want to see again (and I often made save games to do exactly this.) There’s a few games I’ve finished that I occasionally pick up, load one particular save from, watch the scene and then close. Yet most eroges tend to assume the only thing we’d ever want to see again are the H scenes. Preferably accompany each event recollection with a CG thumbnail (or, if no CGs are involved, a screenshot) and a description.[/]
[]More eroges should let me label/relabel save games. I like to write down which route I’m on, as well as any other short notes I want to associate with the save. I also like to write down the save number if I’m using a kouryaku (most of them have stuff like ‘save 1’ ‘save 2’ ‘continue from save 1’ etc). Show the label on the save’s ‘tile’; I don’t want to have to click on it or mouseover it in order to find save 4![/]
[]Doesn’t need to be said as much nowadays, but give me at least a hundred save slots. Preferably more if the game is long.[/]
[]More eroges should have built-in flowcharts. Preferably ones I can click on to jump to any point I’ve already visited. Although I get that titles that use variables/‘love points’ and/or have a trunk that periodically diverges and merges back with implications for later divergence points can’t use a flowchart. But on that matter:[/]
[]Unless you’re really clever about it, ease up on the choices. The ratio of choices:endings that you see in a full playthrough should be 4:1 or less. Triangle Heart has a ratio of ~125:1 (1249 choices and 10 endings, and it’s even higher if you play the original version!), though that is admittedly an extreme example. The point is that choices interrupt the story and you pretty much have to worry about whether it’s important enough to save, whether it will take you down the right path, if it actually matters at all etc. Keep choices to the few important ones (unless you use them particularly well, and some eroges do this)[/]
[]Retire this plotline: the protagonist has to help find X members for a particular school club by a certain date or the club will have to be closed / can’t be formed. It’s overused and I wouldn’t mind never seeing it again.[/]
[]Retire this plotline: the protagonist promises to marry one or more of the heroines as a child, and although he’s forgotten the promise, she hasn’t. Nowadays only permissable if you reverse it (i.e. the heroine has forgotten about the promise but the protagonist still remembers.)[/]
[]Retire this plotline: the school has 7 mysteries, protagonist and heroines and possibly the hilarious male sidekick character(s) end up exploring the school (possibly at night) to find them all. Unless you use it REALLY really well. As a sidenote, the exploring-the-school-at-night test of courage plotline can also go. Plenty of other reasons to visit the school at night that can better fit into a story, tests of courage are lame and not really appropriate for 18±we-promise-“gakuen”-students.[/][/list]

Add your own!

#2

_ A better ratio of males:females characters
_ Little secrets, easter eggs, and “mini games”, which are fun to discover and see (…with a guide, at least). (I’m thinking in Clannad; I think other Key works also do this)
_ Skipping already read scenes (Type Moon and Circus do this since always, but I haven’t find it much elsewhere)

#3

What’s a ‘better ratio’? More females? =P

Yeah. LB! and Rewrite do too, especially Rewrite. Kanon and Air don’t.

#4

It’s always nice to have many girls, but having more than one or two boys can give many chances for comedy in a school setting (and in other settings it’d give much more realism).

#5

Would be nice if more eroge had subpairings occur; one of your friends forms a relationship over the course of the game. The only games that I can name off the top of my head that do this are Edelweiss and Kansen 3.

#6

Unless the female character in that pairing is extremely unattractive (Edelweiss made sure of that, dunno about Kansen 3), some particularly invested readers may experience jealousy attacks, and we can’t have that.

#7

Here’s the aforementioned heroine for Kansen 3 :mrgreen: :

http://infection-game.sakura.ne.jp/comm … mizu_l.jpg

Of course in that game you switch POVs quite a bit, meaning you get some extra ero scenes besides just the MC and one of the main heroines.

Come to think it, classic Black Cyc did the subpairing thing with Gun Katana and they kind of do it in MinDead Blood. Also from a few CG I’ve seen, it also happens in one of the epilogue stories of Soul Link Ultimate

#8

Castle Fantasia II also had an already formed subpairing (and you saw one H scene with them)

#9

Ayakashibito had one form over at least one of the routes.

#10

I’ve already said in another thread how I really really want this to happen. I have unfortunately not developed a habit of saving often. That means there’s a lot of scenes in B or C grade VNs, that i’d like to revisit , but can’t, because the rest of the game sucked/was forgettable and I don’t remember where the scenes were approximately located.
As a sidenote, it’s sad how I’ve never even encountered those overused plots Lancer-X mentioned. Well, DC2 had the 7 mysteries.

#11

Guess you haven’t played Shuffle! yet :mrgreen:

#12

I wish that “winnable” wasn’t always synonymous with “has h-scenes”. Nocturnal Illusion is a great game and everything, but there are a few things holding it back, and this is one of the biggest ones. Yura and Arisa in particular it was jarring to the point that it detracted from their storylines.

I also wish that games with story wouldn’t have the main character sleep with everybody and tell each of them he loves them. (I don’t think they do that so much anymore, so I guess I succeeded in my wish?)

#13

Oh, shoot. I have. Totally forgot about it. Well, Shuffle! was pretty forgettable in general.

#14

The first, and probably most obvious, things that I could say are “don’t like, don’t buy” and “don’t like, don’t make.” If you see a game that has a concept which you honestly dislike, then it may be wise to avoid purchasing it. Also, if you have the skill and the will to create games and VNs, then make sure to consider what you’ve learned from other media, and exclude game and story concepts which you find overused or frustrating.

Having said that… it’s still rare to see romance games in which an NPC has an active, canonical relationship with another character. Since I don’t read untranslated VNs, I don’t know what happens in the three-part Green Green series. From what I saw in the TV anime spinoff, and from checking a Wikipedia article a moment ago, the characters Bacchigu and Arisa form a relationship. Neither of them are available as romance options for the main character. Also, I can name only a few games with “love rival” characters: the first two Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side games, and Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (probably some later games in the franchise as well).

Stuff I’d like to see in future translated and western VNs:

  • “All options.” A game in which the main character can have a relationship with a variety of adults. Winter Wolves’ recent indie game Loren the Amazon Princess is a good step in this direction. Its main character can be male or female, and all its important characters are implicitly bisexual adults. It was likely inspired by several western RPGs from recent years.

  • Emphasis on friendship. Why yes, I’m interested in a VN in which the main character’s goal is not to have sex / find a spouse / form a harem. Why not one in which the person’s first goal is become friends with a variety of people? This could be a worksafe story, but if necessary, adult content might be a possibility.

  • More games with simulation gameplay. Companies in Japan have made a few games in the last decade in which the main character actually goes on dates, and in which there are enough stats and planning to make the game a genuine simulation. But only a few have official translations, and the number of complex romance games seems much lower compared with the late 90s.

  • Complex gameplay in general. There’s a modest number of games in English that have BxG pairings and quite a bit of complexity. But only a few with possible GxB, BxB, or GxB pairings. And if you like alternate pairings, intricate gameplay, and adult content, then your options are few indeed.

  • Balance of relationship and plot. Again, this does exist… but I’d like to see more games which balance out the characters’ romances with a large general plot.

Same here. I’ve heard of those plot concepts, but I have yet to read a VN which uses one of them. Maybe that just means I’ve missed a lot of recent VNs… In fact, I’m kind of interested in seeing a game where the first challenge would be to gather people for a club.

#15

Well, I suppose the main thing I was trying to get across is that these are all things that would almost universally make eroge better, but (at least individually) none are deal breakers. Hence the reason why I didn’t bother including ‘obvious’ things like “make games with better stories!”. Clannad is an obvious example of a great title with the ‘find enough people to form this club’ plotline (although admittedly it wasn’t overused at the time- but it’s been 8 years since Clannad came out and it’s overused NOW) Good titles also use the 7 mysteries plotline and sometimes to quite good effect. Lots of old titles have very primitive systems and not only don’t have advanced things like scene selection/skipping and flowcharts but don’t even have decent save systems, but they can still be good! Just harder to play.

I mostly view these aspects as relatively small things that could be changed to improve the overall experience and are relatively tertiary to simply writing better stories.

So basically, they aren’t a ‘don’t like, don’t buy’ issue for me. I’m never going to ignore a game simply because it features one slightly overused element in its plot or because it don’t have as many save slots as I would like, whereas I’ll obviously ignore a game if it has a bad story and lacks other redeeming factors (not that many things can redeem a bad story, but both comedy and gameplay can potentially alleviate it to some extent)

In terms of making stuff myself, absolutely, if I had the skill and will to do so. I definitely have the skill to program this sort of thing, but drawing? even writing*? Not so much. I’d like to hook onto a talented group of people that want to make something with a bit of a fancier system or more gameplay than usual and contribute there where my skills would be most valuable. Unfortunately I don’t hang around those communities so much any more so the opportunities don’t really arise. Only people here that I know are doing stuff are Narg and Papillion, both of whom are quite capable of programming this sort of stuff.

*I’ve tried writing VNs, both in English and Japanese. I never get far. I’m just not a writer, however much I like to pretend.

#16

Things I want from eroge:
1.Stop this limited edition shit.Make it a collectors edition instead so people who are facing unforeseen situations don’t get fucked out of cool extras and story goodness.

2.More stories using hypnosis and mind control,and not just for sex.I want intrigue and plots and betrayals,as well as all the other cool stuff that can be done with real life hypnosis.

3.More CGs used,I realize money affects these things,but some scenes stretch it really far.

4.Age,release some info on Elfen Blaze,and Jellyfish release some info on Black and White.No one likes a tease.

#17

^^ this.

Saimin Jiken was the best hypnosis eroge I’ve read and it was the best because of the hypnosis stuff around the beginning when the protagonist was playing with it. This kind of stuff is far more interesting than the usual stuff hypnosis eroges devolve into (sometimes very quickly.)

#18

More eroges should store all notable events, not just H scenes, in the game’s recollection mode. There are some particular scenes that, because of my tastes in writing, I definitely want to see again (and I often made save games to do exactly this.)

The Da Capo series has this feature, which I’d want to see elsewhere too.

#19

Deeper branching: Rather than having a large common arc with short substories for each heroine, it’d be interesting to see more short common arcs with medium-sized substories for each heroine. I want to feel like this is her story. Reduce number of heroines as necessary.
For eroge with gameplay: Shorter games that branch early, to avoid repeated text and especially repeated gameplay. Also, incentives that encourage multiple playthroughs while maintaining challenge / balance. Softhouse Chara makes a number of games that fit this model, with my favorite example being Wizard’s Climber.

#20

Tasogare no Sinsemilla was one game that had two trunks that then branched. I wouldn’t call the branches medium-sized, though. And the trunks didn’t have that much story in the first place.
You-gaku also had two distinct trunks for the two groups of heroines, but the game was overall pretty bad, and one of the trunks was incredibly awful.

I liked how Utawarerumono did it: the trophies gave an incentive, and the difficulty levels gave an appropriate challenge (and all the while staying strictly optional).
And Eien no Aselia would be an example of how NOT to do it (Galaxy Angel is even worse, but the gameplay is less of a time sink).