How obvious should choices be?

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exaltedexoskeleton
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How obvious should choices be?

#1 Post by exaltedexoskeleton »

Well, I've hit my first snag with my NaNoRenO. I wanted to create a game where you have the choice to be nice or nasty to people and the game starts turning against you if you're nasty. But as I'm writing it, it's all really obvious which choice is which, and what player would choose nasty and purposely shoot themselves in the foot? I don't think super murky choices are a good idea either, though. since they can be really frustrating for the player.

So what's the preference? I've come up with a few thoughts:

1. Maybe if the choice is so obvious, ditch choosing it and just have the game run with the obvious option.
2. Go farther in the other direction. Maybe the 'wrong' choice is obvious, but it runs down to an entertainingly nasty end for the protagonist (because at least some people like the sticky ends in, for example, the Choose Your Own Scare books).
3. Bite the bullet and make it murkier. In my case, that means ditch the nice/nasty metric and make it more about personalities bouncing off each other. Harder to write and unlikely to yield the same results as a nice/nasty system, but maybe deeper and just as interesting in the long run. It does make choices harder though; the first act of Katawa Shoujo is written like this, and I found it hard to get the routes I wanted on a first go.

Anybody agree with any of these, or have other opinions on obvious choices?

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Re: How obvious should choices be?

#2 Post by dramspringfeald »

#1 If I remember Mass Effect, Fable and most of the Grand Theft Auto's run on this. If your a tool everyone is out to end you or is outright afraid of you, if you are nice or at least not a tool

Maybe try to make the Good decisions better morally and the bad one better on the "fun end" Such as on ME2 one mission you give a guy 1 of 2 options, talk and go free OR Kick him out the window. Choosing "good" makes the next fight much easier but choosing "Boot" is SO much more satisfying.
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Re: How obvious should choices be?

#3 Post by icecheetah »

My first instinct was to have some be obvious, some not but... if it's purely about nastiness vs. niceness rather than trying to figure out what the right thing to is, then I think it should be obvious which option is which. If you are being nasty to someone then you know it, and it's unfair to call someone 'nasty' just because they did something that turned out bad when they thought it'd help.

People do want to see bad ends sometimes. I personally like to get the bad ends over with first.

Edit: dramspringfeald has a good point about making the bad choices fun in and of themselves.

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Re: How obvious should choices be?

#4 Post by gekiganwing »

As obvious as you want them to be. Think about the following:

* Do you want to present the reader with a challenging dilemma?
* How about situations that don't have any good answers?
* Do you want your audience to relax?
* Are you trying to deliver a message with your choices? (Such as "victory is difficult.")

I like the idea of presenting choices that seem to have easy answers... and then lead to unexpected problems. But I don't think you will benefit if you frustrate your reader with too many plot twists. Each plot development should make sense.

If every choice leads to the same outcome, that can be frustrating. Though I like the idea of presenting choices in which every answer seems positive or beneficial... but they lead to slightly different results.

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Re: How obvious should choices be?

#5 Post by SundownKid »

With my game, I tried not to make a "good/evil" dichotomy and rather a "noble/ignoble" one. In Mass Effect, choosing Renegade doesn't make Shepard evil - it just makes him cruel. Of course, go to far in that direction and you will obviously become corrupted, and go too far on the good side and you will become unwilling to listen to reason.

You can just scrap the morality system and have the choices be 2 different ways of solving the problem, it's just trickier.

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Re: How obvious should choices be?

#6 Post by LVUER »

IMO, the most important think is the message you want to get across in your game. In real life, being nice doesn't always yield the best result. Some times we have to be nasty (with a purpose).

Example:
1. You are eating and your dog is looking at you with his puppy eyes. Will you give him some of your food? If you are being nice and choose yes, it will actually have bad result. Your dog won't get disciplined and will ask you again for food next time. And once you do it, it's IMPOSSIBLE to change it no matter what. Being strict (or nasty for some people) is actually the best course of action.

2. A cliche example. Like if there's a bad people and you have chance to kill him. And then that person asks you for mercy and promise to be better person. Will you let him life? If your game is some children anime where white and black is as plain as white and black, letting him life is obviously the way to go. The next time you meet the guy, he will be on your side. But if your game is not, then may be the next time you meet the ungrateful guy, he will still on the other side, creating more problems for you (and humanity)... or even worse, you learned that that bastard just killed someone important to you (on purpose or not). So may be... killing him was the best after all.
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Re: How obvious should choices be?

#7 Post by Flowers from Nowhere »

Assuming that this is your first game you definitely don't want to bite off more than you can chew. Don't let your game spiral out of control into something enormous that overwhelms you and you have to give up on.

That said, the choices you offer (and their consequences) have a big influence on how the player perceives the story. For example: say I was writing a court intrigue story. Intrigue dramas are defined by how difficult it is for the characters involved to figure out who is on whose side and ultimately who they can trust. For that sort of story I would try to make it very difficult (but still possible) for the player to figure out the right path. On the other hand, if I were writing a fluffy high school romance I would probably make the choices much more obvious.

I think making the wrong choices lead to satisfying situations (like dramspringfeald said) or having them lead to a satisfyingly bad end (your idea) would both be good ways of handling obvious "bad" decisions.

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