Love between party members yay or nay?

[SLEEP]

This is an argument against hit points, magic points, and any statistical system as well.

I mean, there are only six basic human emotions in varying mixtures and intensity; it's very easy to measure someone's mood by tracking those as a series of points, with abstractions like Trust, Intimacy, and Affection.  Combat is hard.  Combat requires complex physics.

I don't mean to come off as flippant here.  But I'm interested in doing multilinear romance stories, and you need systems to do that.  The fact that we have systems that model combat - a chaotic, bloody mess that isn't logical in the slightest - better than we have ones that model psychology is really just a matter of historical accident.  

While I agree with you that there are a hell of a lot of games just as bad as you're describing - and that Harvest Moon is one of the worst offenders - If we want to have good multilinear romances we need to be somewhat reductive.  We just need better models of human behavior than the ones games are using! Seriously, screw kindness coin economies forever.

There's a lot broken about RPG combat, it's boring, grindy, and reductive of violence, but those are all discussions for another time. Seriously, they are, because those are all cool topics, I could start a whole thread on it. Nevermind though.

Combat is a lot more choice-y than romance, but the outcome is a lot less. You have a bunch of attacks, spells, and multiple ways to win each battle. Each battle is boxed off in it's own little system, assuming we're just talking about traditional rpg combat - but even action combat and stuff is a very choice-y. But all these choices really only affect the outcome of the battle, and a loss isn't a valid outcome in a lot of games. (A loss means death, and the game encourages you to try again, in most cases. In some games, there's a bit of story if you die, but you're still almost universally encouraged to go back and try again.[there are exceptions, but they're all rare fringe examples]) Like, for all it's choices, combat only has 1 outcome. You win, and win, and win, and then you win. If you lose, you try again until you win. There are tonnes of approaches and stats to combat, but there's one outcome.

With romance in games, there are less choices and more outcomes, most of the time. That's why it doesn't work, whereas combat does what it does better. It would be interesting to have a choice-y romance system with only one romantic partner. I've seen 1 game which lets you choose your partner and remains cool, and that's Katawa Shoujo. (I don't play many visual novels, but the subject matter interested me.) But it presents the choice of partner early in the game, and after a certain point it becomes a love story all about just you two. It's also a lot less choice-y after you've picked your love interest. A lot of games are almost set up assuming you should and will ditch your partner and get a new lover at any time - and it's possible in a lot of places. Like Harvest Moon yeah.

Like, what if you picked your love interest during the first third or so of the game, and then couldn't change your mind? And there's an interesting plot in store if you win or lose, and plot twists to rock the boat and to test your investment as a player in your digital girl and/or boy friend, and maybe even mask the backend stats so those playing the game casually have to make an educated guess as to where they stand, rather than a clean statistical score as to where they stand. It would only work with a linear conventional RPG plot, the only problem being the same one all romance options have, it would require more time writing. Just an idea i'm throwing up, tell me if it's cool.

This post was a bit stream-of-conscious, good luck deciphering it.

 

[Dalph]

The question is, why not?

Quoting Makio-Kuta, romances are not needed but if they're done right they can be a nice addition to the game.

Take a look at the love story in Shadow of Colossus, it's not that elaborated but still...it has something awesome in it.

Or the one of Tidus and Yuna in FFX, it was a mixture of good emotions and touchy moments, a videogame needs this kind of stuff or it will be kinda...empty...if not empty, it will still miss something if you think about it.

People usually love romances (even if they say they don't).

And can we talk about Grandia and the awesome love story between Justine and Feena? Oh God, I miss that awesome game, such great memories...

To me the answer is yes, I don't care if it's clichè, I like love stories (they can even be funny sometimes).

 

[BlissAuthority]

There's a lot broken about RPG combat, it's boring, grindy, and reductive of violence, but those are all discussions for another time. Seriously, they are, because those are all cool topics, I could start a whole thread on it. Nevermind though.

Combat is a lot more choice-y than romance, but the outcome is a lot less. You have a bunch of attacks, spells, and multiple ways to win each battle. Each battle is boxed off in it's own little system, assuming we're just talking about traditional rpg combat - but even action combat and stuff is a very choice-y. But all these choices really only affect the outcome of the battle, and a loss isn't a valid outcome in a lot of games. (A loss means death, and the game encourages you to try again, in most cases. In some games, there's a bit of story if you die, but you're still almost universally encouraged to go back and try again.[there are exceptions, but they're all rare fringe examples]) Like, for all it's choices, combat only has 1 outcome. You win, and win, and win, and then you win. If you lose, you try again until you win. There are tonnes of approaches and stats to combat, but there's one outcome.

With romance in games, there are less choices and more outcomes, most of the time. That's why it doesn't work, whereas combat does what it does better. It would be interesting to have a choice-y romance system with only one romantic partner. I've seen 1 game which lets you choose your partner and remains cool, and that's Katawa Shoujo. (I don't play many visual novels, but the subject matter interested me.) But it presents the choice of partner early in the game, and after a certain point it becomes a love story all about just you two. It's also a lot less choice-y after you've picked your love interest. A lot of games are almost set up assuming you should and will ditch your partner and get a new lover at any time - and it's possible in a lot of places. Like Harvest Moon yeah.

Like, what if you picked your love interest during the first third or so of the game, and then couldn't change your mind? And there's an interesting plot in store if you win or lose, and plot twists to rock the boat and to test your investment as a player in your digital girl and/or boy friend, and maybe even mask the backend stats so those playing the game casually have to make an educated guess as to where they stand, rather than a clean statistical score as to where they stand. It would only work with a linear conventional RPG plot, the only problem being the same one all romance options have, it would require more time writing. Just an idea i'm throwing up, tell me if it's cool.

This post was a bit stream-of-conscious, good luck deciphering it.

Dang I want to see that thread on RPG combat now.

That is an excellent point about victory being the only option in combat.  We're trained to not accept defeat as an answer in video games... now I'm interested in a game where losing key battles affects the story.  They'd have to automatically create a new save after those battles (so you can go back and see what happens if you win/so the player gets a clue that losing is an option)...

I am honestly going the early romance determination route and recommend doing so for all the reasons you've described; Katawa Shoujo was a big influence for me as well.  (Seriously, PM me so we can discuss KS; with a few exceptions it worked incredibly well, and those exceptions were instructive to me).  There is a major caveat to the way I do this, but that might be it's own topic or more PM fodder; the short version is that I think if you can get someone interested in you, you should be able to drive them away as well.  Another "failure should be a viable option" thing, really.

...the short version is that I'm doing everything you've described with a (non-rpgmaker) visual novel project I'm working on, and that I'm probably going to do the same thing in Swan Song.  it is a final fantasy joke