Options in a decision tree (was: Are they stupid....?)

[Fenrir34]

I need examples on good and bad menu options. I know this may seem random but I need help to know what types of menu options are good in a game.

Mine don't sound bad but they aren't good.

For example

menu
"Let him help you carry the trash"

"Call him weak"

"Refuse his help"

Are these good or just a cheap way to have menu options. Opinions and examples would be very appreciated

(And sorry if this is random and dumb but I must know....)

[gekiganwing]

If you read a variety of visual novels, you will eventually find some which have the following:

* blind choices (no indication of what will happen next)
* meaningless choices (do not affect the story, other than maybe a few lines of dialogue)
* "But Thou Must" style mandatory choices (only one is a viable choice, and the dialogue will loop until the player chooses it)
* (seemingly) trivial actions which lead to significantly different results
* choices which have really obvious results

I think you'll benefit from a few obvious decisions, and a few vague decisions. Think about what's thematically appropriate.

[Fenrir34]

If you read a variety of visual novels, you will eventually find some which have the following:

* blind choices (no indication of what will happen next)
* meaningless choices (do not affect the story, other than maybe a few lines of dialogue)
* "But Thou Must" style mandatory choices (only one is a viable choice, and the dialogue will loop until the player chooses it)
* (seemingly) trivial actions which lead to significantly different results
* choices which have really obvious results

I think you'll benefit from a few obvious decisions, and a few vague decisions. Think about what's thematically appropriate.

Oh okay. Thank you very much. This variety should help me

[Elmiwisa]

Actually, I find it hard to find examples of bad choices, since pretty much all of them can be put to good use in appropriate context.
I will illustrate my point by giving examples of how gekiganwing's list can be used well:

* blind choices (no indication of what will happen next)
* (seemingly) trivial actions which lead to significantly different results

Excellent as a randomizer. Sometimes you want some event to be random, but using an actual randomizer would frustrate the player. So instead making the outcome of the event logically dependent on the player's choice through some Rube Goldberg's chain of logic act as good as a randomizer, while allowing the player complete control once the player want to aim to experience all events and all endings in the story.
Example: murder mystery. The seemingly innocuous choice made before the murder took place actually determine who is the culprit, because depend on what the MC do he would inadvertently help to complete one of the scheme. This is a good way to use it because: (a) more replay value with more potential culprit; (b) the player won't be spoiled by who the culprit is since it appears random to the player; (c) once the player want to experience the story for all culprit, it won't be frustrating to play through 10 hours only to find out that it is still the same culprit.

* meaningless choices (do not affect the story, other than maybe a few lines of dialogue)

Good way to provide player with part of the story without throwing it all out at once.
Example: the MC have 3 possible romantic interest. Now the MC is having an outing with her best friend, who happen to know some significant backstory about all 3 of them. Since normally the player will just make the MC go after 1 guy, it is overwhelming to see the backstory of all 3 guys, 2 of which would be irrelevant in this playthrough anyway. So a good way to handle this is to let the player make a choice for the MC to ask her best friend about one of them. That way the player will only see the relevant backstory, and will see the others on different playthrough.

* "But Thou Must" style mandatory choices (only one is a viable choice, and the dialogue will loop until the player chooses it)

There are a lot of good use for this actually. 4 common ways: (a) puzzle; (b) show helplessness; (c) provide extra information; (d) make things more realistic.
Example for (a): murder mystery, you need to identify correctly the culprit, the method, and the motive. Each have 10 possible choices, making it 1000 possible combination, in which only 1 allow you to proceed. The point of this is of course, as a challenge to the player: they need to put all the clues together to find out that 1 correct answer among the 1000 possibilities.
Example for (b): the MC is trapped in a room. There are a list of choices of how to escape. No matter which are chosen, the MC will act on it but eventually fail due to extreme measure put in by the villain to prevent escape. After 5 choices are made, another character will show up to rescue. This show that the MC isn't a damsel who act all helpless and made no attempts to help herself, but rather she is helpless because the situation is completely against her.
Example for (c): MC is talking to a character. One choice of dialogue which ask that character for help will advance the story, but there are several other choices that will only cause the player to chit-chat with that character about stuff. This is a convenient way to provide information to the player which are not completely crucial.
Example for (d): MC got locked out of her room. The story could simply proceed to have the MC get into the laundry room, break down the fake wall to get to the air duct, crawl in to get to the balcony outside her room, then dislodge the window pane of the room to climb inside. But the player are going to scream "Why doesn't she try X?" where X can be one of the many more common sense solution, such as call the locksmith, call her roommate, kick down the door, pick the lock, etc. A good way to handle this is to give the player a bunch of choice, where all the common sense solution are listed, but once chosen the MC will attempt it but fail. This way the player won't be overwhelmed by a huge chunk of text describing why exactly all normal solution fail, yet they could choose to see it if they wanted to. This can be combined easily with (a) too: the reasons why these normal solution fail should already be known to the player if they are paying attention.

* choices which have really obvious results

Wait, why is this type of choice even bad at all???

As for really bad type of choice, here are 2 that I think are always bad (or at least I can't think of any situation where they would be good):

-Choice that are misleading about the nature of the choice:
Example: let's say the MC bumped into someone. You get the choice between "I'm sorry..." and "How dare you bump into me!". Now it seems like this is a choice between either being nice and apologetic or being means and narcissist, but it turn out that the choice is really about the MC's personality (and the character being bumped into is a minor throwaway character), and worse, the first choice make the MC manipulative and Machiavellian while the second choice make the MC a tsundere. This is an example of choice that are simply misleading about what they are for, and what effect they have.
Why is this bad? It is 4th wall breaking, to say the least. The game is basically tricking the players themselves, rather than the MC. This is about as bad as a mystery where the player get to see the MC's thought, only for the MC to turn out to be the murderer.

-Schrodinger's choice:
This type of choice isn't always bad, but I can't think of situation where they are good either: at best they are neither good nor bad but still can be done away altogether. This refers to the kind of choice where you are making choice for a character, and such choice end up affecting the event later, but the effect cannot be justified by the narrative. So-called Schrodinger because it basically boil down to the issue that as long as certain information are not revealed to the player, the game can make it so that it look like it have meant to be like that all along.
An example where it is bad: the MC is going out with her secret crush and her best friend. Her crush just fall down and faint. You get to make the choice for the MC between letting her best friend bring him to the hospital or the MC do it herself. If the best friend do it, then the friend get adequate medical attention and survive. If the MC do it, then suddenly a religious extremist will turn up and burn down the hospital, concluding with a bitter scene where the MC's crush die in the MC's arm saying "I love you" with his last breath. Now, I can understand the reason why the arsonist will only turn up when the scene would be most heart-wrenching, but from a narrative aspect, whether you go to the hospital or not should not affect whether the arsonist turn up or not.
An example where it is okay: the MC is walking out of town. The MC can choose to go through the north gate or south gate. No matter which gate the MC go out, the MC will bump into a kid who have been playing just outside the gate all morning (the kid is the same for both gate). Here as long as the game make no hints whatsoever about the location of the kid until after the player make the choice, the game can pretend that it is meant for the kid to be there all along. Since this is done to simply introduce the kid to the MC, it don't really hurt the narrative. It would be bad however if it turn out that there is a murder, and the location of the kid in the morning become relevant.
Why is this bad? This is very jarring by the 2nd playthrough. It feels like you're just throwing a bunch of unrelated story together that happen to share some parts: one big reason for choices is to allow player to experience a different side of the story, to explore what-could-have-been. But here it feels like the story happen thanks to divine intervention: stuff happen because that is the most dramatic way to do it. Despite the fact that the choices have effects, it left the player feeling like it have no effects - it is like making candy shape like broccoli for children, you are disguising something good as something bad for no reasons.

[Fenrir34]

Actually, I find it hard to find examples of bad choices, since pretty much all of them can be put to good use in appropriate context.
I will illustrate my point by giving examples of how gekiganwing's list can be used well:

* blind choices (no indication of what will happen next)
* (seemingly) trivial actions which lead to significantly different results

Excellent as a randomizer. Sometimes you want some event to be random, but using an actual randomizer would frustrate the player. So instead making the outcome of the event logically dependent on the player's choice through some Rube Goldberg's chain of logic act as good as a randomizer, while allowing the player complete control once the player want to aim to experience all events and all endings in the story.
Example: murder mystery. The seemingly innocuous choice made before the murder took place actually determine who is the culprit, because depend on what the MC do he would inadvertently help to complete one of the scheme. This is a good way to use it because: (a) more replay value with more potential culprit; (b) the player won't be spoiled by who the culprit is since it appears random to the player; (c) once the player want to experience the story for all culprit, it won't be frustrating to play through 10 hours only to find out that it is still the same culprit.

* meaningless choices (do not affect the story, other than maybe a few lines of dialogue)

Good way to provide player with part of the story without throwing it all out at once.
Example: the MC have 3 possible romantic interest. Now the MC is having an outing with her best friend, who happen to know some significant backstory about all 3 of them. Since normally the player will just make the MC go after 1 guy, it is overwhelming to see the backstory of all 3 guys, 2 of which would be irrelevant in this playthrough anyway. So a good way to handle this is to let the player make a choice for the MC to ask her best friend about one of them. That way the player will only see the relevant backstory, and will see the others on different playthrough.

* "But Thou Must" style mandatory choices (only one is a viable choice, and the dialogue will loop until the player chooses it)

There are a lot of good use for this actually. 4 common ways: (a) puzzle; (b) show helplessness; (c) provide extra information; (d) make things more realistic.
Example for (a): murder mystery, you need to identify correctly the culprit, the method, and the motive. Each have 10 possible choices, making it 1000 possible combination, in which only 1 allow you to proceed. The point of this is of course, as a challenge to the player: they need to put all the clues together to find out that 1 correct answer among the 1000 possibilities.
Example for (b): the MC is trapped in a room. There are a list of choices of how to escape. No matter which are chosen, the MC will act on it but eventually fail due to extreme measure put in by the villain to prevent escape. After 5 choices are made, another character will show up to rescue. This show that the MC isn't a damsel who act all helpless and made no attempts to help herself, but rather she is helpless because the situation is completely against her.
Example for (c): MC is talking to a character. One choice of dialogue which ask that character for help will advance the story, but there are several other choices that will only cause the player to chit-chat with that character about stuff. This is a convenient way to provide information to the player which are not completely crucial.
Example for (d): MC got locked out of her room. The story could simply proceed to have the MC get into the laundry room, break down the fake wall to get to the air duct, crawl in to get to the balcony outside her room, then dislodge the window pane of the room to climb inside. But the player are going to scream "Why doesn't she try X?" where X can be one of the many more common sense solution, such as call the locksmith, call her roommate, kick down the door, pick the lock, etc. A good way to handle this is to give the player a bunch of choice, where all the common sense solution are listed, but once chosen the MC will attempt it but fail. This way the player won't be overwhelmed by a huge chunk of text describing why exactly all normal solution fail, yet they could choose to see it if they wanted to. This can be combined easily with (a) too: the reasons why these normal solution fail should already be known to the player if they are paying attention.

* choices which have really obvious results

Wait, why is this type of choice even bad at all???

As for really bad type of choice, here are 2 that I think are always bad (or at least I can't think of any situation where they would be good):

-Choice that are misleading about the nature of the choice:
Example: let's say the MC bumped into someone. You get the choice between "I'm sorry..." and "How dare you bump into me!". Now it seems like this is a choice between either being nice and apologetic or being means and narcissist, but it turn out that the choice is really about the MC's personality (and the character being bumped into is a minor throwaway character), and worse, the first choice make the MC manipulative and Machiavellian while the second choice make the MC a tsundere. This is an example of choice that are simply misleading about what they are for, and what effect they have.
Why is this bad? It is 4th wall breaking, to say the least. The game is basically tricking the players themselves, rather than the MC. This is about as bad as a mystery where the player get to see the MC's thought, only for the MC to turn out to be the murderer.

-Schrodinger's choice:
This type of choice isn't always bad, but I can't think of situation where they are good either: at best they are neither good nor bad but still can be done away altogether. This refers to the kind of choice where you are making choice for a character, and such choice end up affecting the event later, but the effect cannot be justified by the narrative. So-called Schrodinger because it basically boil down to the issue that as long as certain information are not revealed to the player, the game can make it so that it look like it have meant to be like that all along.
An example where it is bad: the MC is going out with her secret crush and her best friend. Her crush just fall down and faint. You get to make the choice for the MC between letting her best friend bring him to the hospital or the MC do it herself. If the best friend do it, then the friend get adequate medical attention and survive. If the MC do it, then suddenly a religious extremist will turn up and burn down the hospital, concluding with a bitter scene where the MC's crush die in the MC's arm saying "I love you" with his last breath. Now, I can understand the reason why the arsonist will only turn up when the scene would be most heart-wrenching, but from a narrative aspect, whether you go to the hospital or not should not affect whether the arsonist turn up or not.
An example where it is okay: the MC is walking out of town. The MC can choose to go through the north gate or south gate. No matter which gate the MC go out, the MC will bump into a kid who have been playing just outside the gate all morning (the kid is the same for both gate). Here as long as the game make no hints whatsoever about the location of the kid until after the player make the choice, the game can pretend that it is meant for the kid to be there all along. Since this is done to simply introduce the kid to the MC, it don't really hurt the narrative. It would be bad however if it turn out that there is a murder, and the location of the kid in the morning become relevant.
Why is this bad? This is very jarring by the 2nd playthrough. It feels like you're just throwing a bunch of unrelated story together that happen to share some parts: one big reason for choices is to allow player to experience a different side of the story, to explore what-could-have-been. But here it feels like the story happen thanks to divine intervention: stuff happen because that is the most dramatic way to do it. Despite the fact that the choices have effects, it left the player feeling like it have no effects - it is like making candy shape like broccoli for children, you are disguising something good as something bad for no reasons.

Thank so much for the information on the choices. I think this will help me greatly for now I have a better understanding. Thanks

[SHiNKiROU]

If you read a variety of visual novels, you will eventually find some which have the following:

* blind choices (no indication of what will happen next)
* meaningless choices (do not affect the story, other than maybe a few lines of dialogue)
* "But Thou Must" style mandatory choices (only one is a viable choice, and the dialogue will loop until the player chooses it)
* (seemingly) trivial actions which lead to significantly different results
* choices which have really obvious results

I think you'll benefit from a few obvious decisions, and a few vague decisions. Think about what's thematically appropriate.

In Mass Effect, there are two types of meaningless choices: voluntary infodumps, where the player asks question to learn about the character and setting, and wording choice, where you say the same thing in different attitude. I've never seen visual novels where you can choose the attitude of your reply.

If you want to make your game unpredictable, make choices at a distance, where the result of the choice is not immediate, but it makes difference happens later on. I created some character development choices that way.

My way of explaining Schrodinger's choice:
A static statement (should be decided before the story starts) has unknown truth value, the static statement changes values depending on a choice. Metafictionally, the statement is decided during the choice (the author intends to do it), and in-universe, the statement is decided all along due to in-universe knowledge and self-consistency. The is no canon for knowledge affected by Schrodinger's choice.

They can happen to characterization (your sidekick's personality and skills changes to solve your problems depends on which problem you got into) and setting (depending on your choice, aliens are objectively real or fake).

The interesting thing about Schrodinger's choice is that, it meshes well with time travel stories, assuming certain paradox resolution models. I have a universe where the past is determined algebraically by the present (the presence of consciousness creates a fixed point in the space time continuum).

The name Schrodinger's choice comes from the thought experiment of Schrodinger's cat. Also look up many worlds interpretation.

[Fenrir34]

If you read a variety of visual novels, you will eventually find some which have the following:

* blind choices (no indication of what will happen next)
* meaningless choices (do not affect the story, other than maybe a few lines of dialogue)
* "But Thou Must" style mandatory choices (only one is a viable choice, and the dialogue will loop until the player chooses it)
* (seemingly) trivial actions which lead to significantly different results
* choices which have really obvious results

I think you'll benefit from a few obvious decisions, and a few vague decisions. Think about what's thematically appropriate.

In Mass Effect, there are two types of meaningless choices: voluntary infodumps, where the player asks question to learn about the character and setting, and wording choice, where you say the same thing in different attitude. I've never seen visual novels where you can choose the attitude of your reply.

If you want to make your game unpredictable, make choices at a distance, where the result of the choice is not immediate, but it makes difference happens later on. I created some character development choices that way.

My way of explaining Schrodinger's choice:
A static statement (should be decided before the story starts) has unknown truth value, the static statement changes values depending on a choice. Metafictionally, the statement is decided during the choice (the author intends to do it), and in-universe, the statement is decided all along due to in-universe knowledge and self-consistency. The is no canon for knowledge affected by Schrodinger's choice.

They can happen to characterization (your sidekick's personality and skills changes to solve your problems depends on which problem you got into) and setting (depending on your choice, aliens are objectively real or fake).

The interesting thing about Schrodinger's choice is that, it meshes well with time travel stories, assuming certain paradox resolution models. I have a universe where the past is determined algebraically by the present (the presence of consciousness creates a fixed point in the space time continuum).

The name Schrodinger's choice comes from the thought experiment of Schrodinger's cat. Also look up many worlds interpretation.

Okay thanks. I think I could do it that way as well