Relying on days to move most of the story

[CWells]

So since my project involves people playing as college students working in conjuration, I've been putting together a schedule that players must follow. It is a 7 days schedule and there are some free days. Because it is set up like this, I find myself relying on the passing of days to help move the story along. Well, most of the story/gameplay. There will be free days for players to roam around and work on levels, doing extra missions etc.

I just wanted to ask, what do you think of depending on the days to move a story? What tips can you give or what warnings? I'm concerned a little because I know that on the free days, players can just skip and move the story along but it might go by too fast, forcing players to face stronger parts of the game before they might be ready. I am experimenting with ways to prevent that but some feedback on how to handle the passing of days would be great...

 

[orochii]

All I can give is some examples. First and maybe more typical, the sim dating games. Days are divided onto morning, mid-day, afternoon, evening... You can make an action for each of those "daytimes". Each daytime has its set of available actions, like going to school or working.

Second and maybe more known for some RPG fans, Persona 4. It uses the same kind of division for days. You have one year to accomplish all things in the game. You have certain parts of the day with set events, like going to classes, where you get certain opportunities to get boosts on your character development. And each time you can do things at your own will, you select between things like studying, spending time with characters and etcetera,

BUT the important things related to story advancement are always set to the end of the day, the night time, the only time you can use for getting into dungeons.

So here comes what I can conclude from these sources and what I can say on the subject. If you are worried about the character advancing more than what you expected, you can limit a little the times they can advance. Or, you can make the player go at the pace they want to. It all depends on the kind of gameplay you want, what things do the time passing affect and how they affect it.

I hope this helps,

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[hian]

Just put a limit on it. Make it so that certain days won't end until you completed certain essential points that will involve elements that level up your characters etc, so that they'll never be completely out-levelled in later stages.

Another way is to add a battle access point - like a save point option, or an arena like place, where players can fight whenever they like, to their hearts content without it effecting the timecycle. This way players can always level their characters if they find that their party is too weak for current challenges.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

by days, are we talking about real-time days or in-game days? Doing this with real-time days might not be good for a lot of people, but if it's in-game, as long as you implement it nicely, it's a really nice system to keep players in track (like the days on Valkyrie Profile 1, it's enough to get you through everything that you need as long as you don't do something very wrong)...

 

[Archeia]

Harvest moon is a game that relies on days and certain times of a week (mon, wed, fri for example) to proceed the story without missing anything much. There's a double-edged sword that your game might require some meta knowledge but it can also add replayability as well.

Persona 3~4 does it too but they have an indicaton when a major story event will happen (e.g. The full moon counter, the rainy days -> foggy days display) and that helped a lot for the players to know what is about to happen.

 

[Creative Ed]

I think a good thing you could add to give the player the freedom to continue the story, would be enable to fast forward, like in skyrim for example.

 

[CWells]

Just put a limit on it. Make it so that certain days won't end until you completed certain essential points that will involve elements that level up your characters etc, so that they'll never be completely out-levelled in later stages.

Another way is to add a battle access point - like a save point option, or an arena like place, where players can fight whenever they like, to their hearts content without it effecting the timecycle. This way players can always level their characters if they find that their party is too weak for current challenges.

That's basically what I'm doing for non-free days. There are tasks that must be completed to turn on the Sleep switch so players can go to the next day. On free days, the sleep switch remains on throughout.