jpmaggers
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A Few Quest & Content Questions
🕑 Added 2020-08-12 13:47:15 +0000 UTCHi everyone ^_^
So, over the last week and a half I've been working hard on the new Jess quest. On the bright side I feel it has been going well (the main core content for it is complete, as is the 'Bad End' associated with it), and now I'm just working on the extra paths through it. I do still need to finish up the quest logs, the Jess sandbox interactions after the quest is complete, and a few alternative paths (I currently have 9 endings marked out for the quest), but none of that is essential yet.
The reason why I've put up a poll is that I've come into two big questions for myself over how to formulate quests like this in the future, and I want to hear your feedback before making these decisions. So, what are these questions?
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1/ How much violent and non-sexual adult issue related content should the game contain?
This question came up as I began writing a path where the player overpowers the antagonist of the Jess quest. So far I've always widely avoided violence in all be the most abstract 'you've been knocked out' or saying that a character 'throws a punch'. In this scene however I have it that the player breaks his nose, kicks him whilst he's down and stomps on his hand. This just seemed a bit ... more than we normally deal with here, which in turn made me uncomfortable over whether you'd all be comfortable about it.
Now I want to say that I'll never feature killing in the game either way, though occasionally there may be off-screen allusions to it. Further, there's never going to be a scene of the player being tortured or torturing someone, those are all still not what I want to write and wouldn't fit in with the tone of my writing.
What I'm more curious about is whether my players would prefer more realistic gritty explanations of violence in scenes like the one I've written, or whether they'd prefer a 'fade to black' approach. This decision will likely become even more important as I write quest chains which touch deeper on the lore of the Repurposing Center.
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2/ Should half-finished quests be released in builds?
This is the second question that came to me, as I got to the weekend with a play-able quest, but was concerned that my patrons wouldn't be happy with it due to some of the incomplete options.
You see, the Jess quest has a time-limit after it starts, if you take too long then you just lose. At the time, the only methods to finish it (that I'd finished writing) were to pay the antagonist off, or to just give up on it. Without giving too many spoilers, I had the impression that many players will want to get their own back on the bad guy from the situation, and so I delayed the build.
The quest was complete-able and playable, but it wasn't a full experience yet.
As such I'm curious whether people really care about quests having all their options from the point of being released, or whether they'd prefer it if I waited and provided the full thing all at once.
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Anyways, thanks for helping me out with all the feedback you're willing to offer. Rather than splitting this into multiple polls and overcomplicating things I've put it in one poll that you can vote for multiple options on.
Hope you're all doing well, and happy gaming ^_^
Comments
Jpmaggers
Hi Charles ^_^ That sounds a reasonable take. When I'm talking about violent or aggressive options it normally relates to adding choices to act violently/aggressively when reacting to NPC's rather than anything against the player. I don't really like the idea of actually bad things happening to the player character (not the kind of content I want to write), so I think we're on the same page :) Some people always question me why there aren't more dominant and aggressive options, and they do make sense. For example, in the upcoming quest just punching the antagonist should be (and is) an option to dealing with him, especially if you're playing a muscly ex-criminal. At the end of the day I just want to provide options to cover everyones interests so they can play the game the way they want to. As for learning self-defence, I'm not sure when I'll have the chance to write it, but Darius in the gym is described as a martial artist (can't remember which martial art off the top of my head) and I want to eventually add the ability for him to train you in that skill ^_^
Charles Hinkle
Ask me, I don't mind violent or aggressive content as long as the player character can defend themselves or others. If had the opportunity, my character would learn self-defense.
Jpmaggers
Hi Troqu ^_^ Thank you for your feedback, this was exactly what I was looking for. I just want to start out by saying that I'll be including an option to remove violent content if I do decide to keep the semi-violent scene in, as I can see a decent number of people are against it (and understandably so). I don't think I necessarily explained myself too well earlier, but I've had requests for a long time for me to add in resisting actions and aggressive actions for players to choose. It's one of those things where some players always ask 'Why don't I just hit the NPC?' which in a sandbox simulator game does make a level of sense. Equally, I don't want to ruin the light-hearted sexy fantasy that others have when they're playing, so balancing this realistic choice selection and keeping it fun is a challenge. As before, I do want to reiterate though that any violent scenes will be somewhat toned down, severely limited in what they show, and will always be player started as I don't want scenes where bad things happen to the player (it's why I try to keep all the 'Bad Ends' pretty upbeat). I hope that explains my position a little better, and thank you once again for your feedback, it really does help :)
Troqu
Personally there's so much violence in media (and the real world) that I don't need more in what is for me (since I always go voluntary whether I start male or female) a lighthearted fetish dream. Clearly I'm in the minority though.
