Replay value in a visual novel

[papillon]

I feel like we're all talking at cross-purposes here.

Elimwisa, your suggestions sound very much like ways to force the player to do things they don't enjoy in order to... what? What is actually being achieved? Why would the creator want to make the player do things they don't want to do? How is this benefitting the creator in any way?

We're clearly all missing what the point you're trying to make is, so we're not being able to respond to your real goals and can only point out that making the players miserable and unhappy is bad for the players AND bad for the creators (because if everyone is pissed off by your game and thinks it wasted their time, they will not want to play your games in the future).

I'm guessing that you're starting from the position that replay value is always good and games should absolutely have it, and therefore you want to try and find ways to add it in as cheaply as possible. Is that it?

The trouble is - that isn't true. Adding replay value that is actively unpleasant makes the game far, far less appealing than a game that has no replay value at all.

[Sharm]

The entire point of my argument is that replay value and storytelling are not separate and it will damage your game if you treat it that way. Your thought experiment doesn't do a thing to counter my point. If I had the choice between a KN and a VN with a lot of non-choices and that might lead me to know the exact height of my favorite character hidden in a line of unskippable text, I'd play the KN. That extra stuff doesn't help me get more out of your game, it gets in the way of me enjoying your game. Now, that isn't to say that you can't add extra things that add replay value. Meaningful choices that in the right order could lead to me learning meaningful things about the character, that works for me. You can do that without adding more backgrounds or CG's or sprites too, it just requires some good writing. BTW, I don't know anyone who actually cares about that "height, weight, bloodtype" stuff, at least not enough to replay a game for. It always seems like the writer trying to show their world building to me. Something to consider is that by forcing people to reread your text, instead of being immersed they start analyzing it. Their brain works on other things because they're bored. You never want a reader to be bored. Is your text well polished enough to handle that kind of scrutiny? Most visual novels I've played couldn't, even ones I've enjoyed.

As for your point that you couldn't possibly know if it's a pointless choice, that may be true in a programming sense but it's very obvious when a choice is pointless to the plot. This has been talked about quite a bit in other threads, it'd be worth looking them up. Do you want a few lucky fans who get your game and lot of disillusioned ones who hate it and have no credibility or do you want a lot of people who liked your game but aren't going to replay it and a few who do because it was fun? This isn't your only choices, but if it was I'd choose to have more people play and like my game.

I feel like this whole argument boils down to "trust your fans" vs "use your fans". I don't view potential readers as an enemy or a person to con, I view them as a potential friend who I want to share my creativity with. I also think your readers will pick up on your attitude and respond in kind. So if you don't treat them with respect, they won't show you any.

Another large part of your argument seems to be that you should try to get the players to play the way you want them to experience it, and punish them for doing it any other way. This is completely counter to how to make an enjoyable story and game. There are a lot of fan favorite games like Mega Man where they found ways to get around the way they'd intended the level to go, then put a bonus item or something there instead of fixing the error or letting the player get stuck. If you reward a player for exploring, they feel more invested in the game and more motivated to explore again. Now I know you're going to say "But that's what I'm talking about with these hidden correct choices!" but it's not really. In a visual novel any path that leads nowhere new is a punishment, especially if you're forcing a reread of all the text for every replay.

Anyway, I think there are ways to get people to replay your game without being mean to your reader or by adding new artwork. Most of them just require some planning and a bit more text and don't even have to be hard to find. For example, in Chrono Trigger that scene where you can save Lucca's mom? It's the same house as the modern one just with some tiles rearranged and a color overlay. All it required was some programming and some good writing, yet it added a huge amount of replay value and made the game better overall. It was self contained too; it didn't change the ending or the plot at all but it was worthwhile and you learned more about Lucca in a meaningful way. The choices that you had to make to get that secret scene all made sense from a mechanical and story point of view.

[TrickWithAKnife]

-All of the points you made about how these can be annoying to the player are perfectly sensible, and in fact I agree with a lot of your point. Here is the thing: this is Creator Discussion, yet all of the point you made is from the point of view of a player. I am not a VN creator yet of course (not until my first debut), but I am making one, so I already have to need to take creator's side factors into account. The players are not going to take into account issue like time, cost and commitment to make what they want, or at least underestimate the amount needed. Your players ask for the moon and the stars, but if you only have a light bulb and glitter paper, the best you can do is to put them out of reach and hope that nobody take a closer look.

-As I said before, if you don't make meaningless choice obvious, then short of hacking into the game, the player simply CANNOT know whether the choice are meaningless or not. Maybe the choice just have very subtle and obscure effect. It is not an insult to the player's intelligence really, it just take advantage of their ignorance. If someone realize the truth, what are they going to do about it? Call you out? Write a scathing review? Spread their displeasure on various game forum? There will be people who don't realize that, and if they like your game for some other reasons, they will defend for you. And it will work because it is a plausible denial: there is no way to truly prove that they are meaningless choices without hacking into the game. And just as a safety measure, you can simply make a little bit of extra effort to add content that allow you to trip these people up and cause them to lose credibility and perhaps even doubt themselves when they try to claim that the choices are meaningless. For example, let's say your game consist of a lot of meaningless decision points, and among them there are 10 meaningless decision points, each give 2 options. Then there is a total of 2^10=1024 possible way to make these 10 choices. Pick one possible way out, and add in an extra scene at the ending if that exact sequence of choices is made, and make sure there is no significant clues that will clue people in on which one is the correct one. That of course won't take much work. However, if some reviewer, or some disillusioned player, try to claim that your game is full of meaningless decision point, guess what would happen? They are unlikely to have found the hidden scene, and would cite these 10 decision points as example. If you have 1000 fans each player the game multiple time, a few of your fan would have stumble upon that extra scene. And they will of course point that out to show that these decision points are not meaningless. This will cast doubt on the credibility of the reviewer, perhaps even to the point they will doubt themselves, because after all, they make judgment before they have experience the full game. And to an outsider, the whole review will be invalidated and sound like it is written by some ignorant hater who have not really played the game. Add a few of these trap in and you can pretty much cast doubt on every scathing review people made about the game.

Why do you want to make a VN? It seems that you have no respect for the players.
You seem more interested in making VNs time consuming rather than good.

Sorry, but you are going to have trouble getting a decent number of people to play your VN, no matter how great it may be, simply because of your attitude.

Players are a precious commodity. They are more like minor teammates.

This idea of making VNs long and meaningless, then arguing with anyone who tries to point out the flaws, is going to backfire spectacularly.

[Elmiwisa]

@Greeny:

That will only further decrease the entertainment value of your product, and reduce the number of people who will replay.

I think you misunderstood my point. You are adding replay value, which of course, is for people who play the game multiple times, so I don't see how replay value could decrease the entertainment value of the product. Of course the first playthrough should still be amazing, whether there are any replay value or not. There are always people who can't bother with the game the second time. But without replay value, there are even less people who will replay the game, since there is nothing new there. In fact, by giving in minimum effort to add replay value, you ensure that your effort won't be distracted from making the first playthrough good.

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@papillon:
Ok I thought the goal is obvious, but I will explain. The thread start out with Lesleigh essentially asking about the methods to add replay value. Then you also mentioned that well, there is a problem with the standard method of branching out near the end, because in that case the player won't replay the game, they simply save before that point. Hence, I give a list of methods that aimed to achieve the original objective of adding replay value while avoiding possible loopholes like the one you mentioned. Of course, I do not list methods such as writing a totally new paths branch off near the start, because: (a) it is not truely RE-play anymore when it is just a new story that happened to share the prologue, and (b) it involve a lot of efforts from the creator, and that is something that should be taken into account. While there are a bit of my own idea there, most of these are not even my own ideas, these are just what other games (that are story-heavy) have done and is standard, just recasted in the VN context. It caught me by surprise when suddenly people start to argue that these are cruel to the players, considering that most are in fact standard practice that are widely accepted. Then people start to talk about whether adding replay value can be detrimental, which have never been the point of the thread which only ask the how not the why. Beside, I don't think adding in stuff that is only meant for 2nd playthrough can be actively unpleasant at all, since people can simply not play the 2nd time (or play it but without touching the new stuff). So I think that people simply did not get what I am saying, or perhaps the way I described these method make it feels cruel because I did not choose the words well. So I have to elaborate more.

And I don't think adding replay value actually benefit the creator in any significant way. It's close to a pure loss for them. Replay value only benefit the players. The creator only benefit indirectly through player appreciation. So if there are way to add replay value such that it involve minimum effort and yet the player still appreciate it, wouldn't it be better? And does it matter if the player only appreciate it because they did not know better? The players love it, and the creator benefit from the player's admiration and trust all the same. Of course there is always a danger of a lone voice somewhere with a scathing review that attempt a wake up call, which is why I put out an idea that involve little effort to add in just a little bit more content to the VN, and yet that content is enough to trip them up and discredit them, and once they are nothing more than Cassandra, you lost like 1 or 2 fans, which is probably not very significant.

And I don't think these method are meant to force the player to do anything. Just compel them to do it with a carrot scheme. As an example, I will talk about disabling skipping mode for already seen dialogue and minigame:
-Slight variation on a new playthrough can give information that can totally change the meaning of the part that does not change. Sure it is the same text, the same scene, but now with a new meaning. But if player can skip them, they might just do just that and did not realize that these scene now have a new meaning, and thus it lost impact.
-There are people who enjoy seeing the same scene again and again, and want to read/play them against in later playthrough (after all, that is the sole point of CG gallery/music room/scene replay/minigame gallery/etc.). Now with the added advantage of seeing slightly variation in dialogue here and there, it's even better for them to play them again. Some might not realize they will enjoy it at the start, so by making sure they don't skip them, whether manually or automatically, they will eventually realize that they enjoy them.
-There are people who won't enjoy them, hence the need for the carrot. If you let player skip through the part they don't like, they won't enjoy the carrot as much. It is just psychology, something akin to a post-purchase justification. Suddenly, by making the player slog through the content they already went through, you made the carrot feel even more valuable than it actually is, without having to put in any extra effort to it.

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@Sharm:
Eh...I think you misunderstood my points, considering it sounds exactly like you're agreeing with me.
First, regarding meaningless choice vs meaningful choice. It seems like you are thinking of it in black-and-white term, but I think it is a scale. As an example, imagine a VN with 51 decision points. For the first 50 of them, each only have 2 answers and if you choose a correct answer in any 1 of these 50, then you will unlock an options in the 51th one that give you good ending (but you still have the option of going for the bad ending anyway). Think about how meaningful these decision points are. Technically, ALL of them are meaningful because the first 50 contribute to the dialogue at the 51th, and the 51th determine the ending. Yet, I definitely think that the first 50 will fall into the meaningless side of the scale, because their effect come tantalizingly close to 0.
So when you mentioned:

Meaningful choices that in the right order could lead to me learning meaningful things about the character, that works for me.

That is what I have been describing in that thought experiment. I say these choice are meaningless because they are closer to that end of the scale, you say it is meaningful because it have some effects. But we are talking about the same thing.
I am not sure why you would put a KN over the VN though. You still enjoy the same story, nothing is taken out, and the choice nor the extra dialogue have no influence on the plot anyway. If you hate choice, just pick random one. Or perhaps the game can have a preference options to randomly pick choice for you too, it's just a small technical details.
It is in fact very easy to make meaningless choice that does not sound like it, and vice versa. It all depends on how you write it. One example I remember off hand (but never play that game), is some Final Fantasy game and the ultimate weapon is only obtainable through either massive luck or by avoiding opening a number of treasure chest. Opening treasure chest is of course have always been seen as a meaningless choice, but turn out it have effect here. On the reverse side, there are plenty of games that give you dialogue options that appeared to give you relationship points, but the character will die anyway.
I don't think the MegaMan analogy work (I did not play the game, though I just read up on it). Imagine if the exit is right next to the start point, separated by a door, and the level is about finding the key. If the door is not locked, I am pretty sure the creator will fix that issue immediately. If the door can be bypassed by using a clever combination of tools, that is a different story altogether. In the case of VN, the forgot-to-be-locked door would be the ability for the player to just skip through text and minigames; the clever bypass would be a precise and clever sequence of dialogue choice that resolve the subplot entirely earlier than expected, removing a huge chunk of story later.
Again, I did not play Chrono Cross, but it sounds like that is in fact one of the method I listed to the fullest, that is a sequence of hidden correct choice lead to an extra scene that give more details but have no effects on the plot. In fact, this is a perfect example to show that these method are not bad; I probably just did not describe them very well.

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@Trick:
NO NO NO. Why do you people keep not getting what I am talking about? You are now even try to infer my attitude out of a perfectly neutral-toned and impersonal discussion. This thread is about a problem, and I am just suggesting solution. The solution will have to satisfy a goal, stay within the constraint, attempting to optimize certain factors, and avoid potential problems. I don't see how any attitude come in here. The list is as below. And unless I missed out some factors, the discussion should only be about the effectiveness of solutions at solving the problem.

Goal: add replay value to a VN. Emphasis on "replay": that means the player have to somehow go through the same story; of course that does not means the player have to experience the same content, but whatever they experience, it still have to feel like part of a coherent story. So 4 separated plot that just happened to share the same prologue and branch off afterward and have nothing to do with each other is not "replay", it's just 4 stories packaged into a single VN.

Constraints: the usual one (resources, efforts, commitments).

Optimization: need to minimize player's frustration and maximize their enjoyment. Maximize their trust toward your ability to make good VN in the future, and their admiration toward you. It should be obvious here that I am not arguing anything against these ideas at all. After all, I am a VN player for a long time, and only recently start trying to make VN. Of course I know how it feels to be at the receiving end of the frustration, or how trust and admiration factor into my buying decision (or spending time to play decision, if it is a free game).

Potential problem: scathing reviewers and disillusioned players who, with actual and compelling evidences, try to point out how little replay value the VN have, or how little efforts you put in to add these in, or how you try to compel the player into playing the VN many times and like it. They pulls players away, they make your fans enjoy the game less. Of course, since they have actual evidences, you cannot avoid this problem by just wait until people stop listening to them, you need to take it into your hand.

So back to the argument. Is there any specific points that you are disagreeing with? And why do you think these solutions somehow reflect on my attitude, when they are mostly standard practice? A little bit of these solution are my own ideas, so I can't vouch from historical data on their effectiveness. Such as trying to rig the VN to cause the reviewer to lose credibility, all the while staying behind and never actually argue against them, for example. I am sure that someone must have tried that before, but of course there is no ways to know.
And I have no reasons to make a long but low quality VN, because I have no interests putting efforts in a project that I would not enjoy myself. All the solutions I listed take player's enjoyment into account of course. I probably just phrase them wrong and so they come off as some sort of intentional frustration toward the players. The goal of adding replay value is still the priority of course; and constraints are still important, otherwise I my first post would be simply "Make 1000 branching points, 1000000 endings" and be done.

***phew*** that was long.....

[TrickWithAKnife]

Being replayable and having replay value are not the same. I believe the original question was how to make the player want to enjoy playing through a second time, not how to make the experience as time consuming as possible.


The thing I was saying about attitude stems from how I've interpreted your advice.

In a nutshell, it seems that your advice is to punish (unskippable minigames and already seen text) and trick (false choices, implying there are possible endings that don't really exist) the players to make them spend more time playing VNs.

This is pretty much the opposite of what VN devs should do.
Arguing with negative reviewers is only going to make matters worse.



Example: A burger restaurant creates a new burger. Actually, it seems that way, but it's an existing burger with the ingredients cut differently, and the packaging is more difficult to open, just to keep customers in the restaurant longer.

I dislike these ideas, so I make a comment online about it being a bad idea. Suddenly the manager of the burger restaurant starts arguing with me to discredit me.

Will I be likely to have another of their burgers? No chance. Will anyone reading the flame war be interested in a burger from them? Not so many. Will I be telling other people that it's not worth going there? Most definitely.

[trooper6]

So replay value, here are my thoughts on it.

I have experienced two different types of replay desire.

1. Where the story and experience was so amazing that I wanted to experience again. Even if the second experience was exactly the same as the first. In other words, if the story is so moving, I'll play it again just to experience it again.

2. Where there is some really different way of going through the game. Now, this could be a really different plot if you make different choices...or it could be sort of the same plot but really different perspectives/different reactions because you are a different personality. I want to learn something new. Now, I usually don't replay because I often won't feel like I'll learn anything new...but I remember after I played Dragon Age 2 as a Rogue, after it was over I felt like I immediately had to play it again...because I had to know what the game, what the experience being in that world would be like as a Mage. I felt like I would learn something new...which I did. I learned some amazing new things. That, for me was great replay value!

It seems in the sort of romance VNs I see a lot around here, replay value comes in having 5 different romance-able characters. But that usually doesn't do it for me...basically the same story with a slightly different love interest? Eh...I'll do one or two, but often get bored before I get to 3 or 4.

But here's the thing...I don't need mega replay value. If the first playthrough is a god length and well done? That is enough.

ETA: Also here is another sort of replay. If the game is really, really good? I may not replay it myself (because I have a *lot* of games to play and not so much time), but I'll get my friends to play it and then we'll do lots of analysis of it together. For example, I have to get a one of my buddies to play Analogue and Hate Plus so we can have long conversations about it. And then there is the other "replay"--if a game is really good? I may not replay that particular game, but I will play subsequent games by the same team.

From a designer's perspective, I tend to think about what I like: branching story, branching perspective, or exploration of the consequences of actions/inactions. That's what I'm interested in, so I'll do something like that.

[Sharm]

@Elmiwisa: First, Chrono Trigger, not Chrono Cross. Chrono Trigger is an excellent example of how to do a branching story correctly to get lots of replays. Chrono Cross, however, is not. The difference is that in Chrono Trigger the branching was all about the story and what would be enjoyable or interesting or meaningful, the replayability wasn't a goal in itself, just happened naturally as part of the experience. Chrono Cross was all about forcing out as much replay value as they could get. "Well, people like hidden characters, let's make 3 that you can only get one per playthrough!" or "Lets make the true ending only possible if you know the super secret code and make exactly the right choices so that you have to cheat or buy the guide to get it on the first playthrough!" The players saw right through this attitude and Chrono Trigger is well loved and has a high resale value even now while Chrono Cross is . . . fun to play once but some people won't even do that because of the disappointment that it isn't what it should be.

None of us are arguing that replay is a bad thing. However, all of us are arguing that many of the methods you're listing are a terrible way to do add it and may actually harm any playability. If a method for adding "replayability" cost you even your first playthrough, you can't really say your adding replay by using it. Let's go into detail about the idea I disagree with the most, disabling skipping. I can not think of a reason or situation where that would be a good idea. In the VNs that I loved and wanted to replay I usually did so in one sitting. This meant that every bit of the text was still fresh in my mind. Rereading any of it, no matter how much new meaning was hidden inside, would be boring. Even if I adored the first playthrough and discovered a super awesome hidden ending that I had to play a different way to get I would turn the game off the moment I realized I couldn't skip. My affection for the game would be tainted with the distaste of being forced to play the creators way and instead of thinking of the game with fondness I would think of it as annoying. The chances of me recommending it to someone else would also be greatly diminished. In this case it would have been better if the game had been a KN because the things added to increase replay value actually harmed my perception of my first playthrough.

I am curious which games you're talking about where these things you mentioned are standard practice in. I will reserve judgment on this point for now but I'd like to point out that just because it's common in AAA games doesn't mean it's a good idea or makes a good game. BTW, if you want to know how replayability is done in a VN, Papillion is an excellent person to listen to. Everyone I know who's played "Long Live the Queen" goes on and on about how fabulous and replayable it is.

I guess I do see it as black and white. A choice that doesn't affect anything, but is there to hide the choice that does? Bad. A choice that adds a points towards making a change later, one that makes sense when I look back on the game later? Good. I can't think of a situation where these would be anything else. If it is a sliding scale, then I'd say using all your methods would put your game on the wrong end of it. Just to be clear, when I say meaningful choice I mean something that the player sees meaning in, not something that gets you points towards something new. A common example to illustrate this is a scenario where the MC has to choose what to have for breakfast. If she chooses toast a meteor crash lands on the MC and they die horribly. If she chooses cereal their crush comes to visit. This choice is meaningless and adds no value to the game, but instead detracts from it.

I don't hate choice, I actually quite enjoy it. The reason why I'd choose the KN in the thought experiment is. . . . Well maybe there's a better way to go at explaining this. There was an experiment (which I learned about in this Ted Talk) where people were asked to find pairs of letters on a sheet of paper for a small wage, then asked to do it again for a smaller wage and again until they refused. There were three groups, one where someone looked it over, one where it was put aside without a glance and one where it was shredded in front of them. The actual value of the activity was exactly the same but there was a difference in results between groups because of the perceived value. In the first group there was an interaction, an immediate result to their action, so the person got more out of the activity for longer. However they found that the negative consequence got nearly the same result as no consequence. This is why I say adding choices that do nothing for the player detracts from the story. A choice that does nothing is negative. So your analogy of carrot and stick doesn't apply, no one wants to play a game where they're beaten with a stick for nearly the whole time.

To put it another way, I think the majority of the methods you've talked about for adding replay actually add frustration and detract from enjoyment instead. Some, like adding a hidden scene that you can only find by carefully navigating the decision tree or adding a fun mini game are good but have been presented as being paired with ways to frustrate the player so they become a negative instead.

@trooper6: Excellent points! I think making the game you want to play is good advice no matter what element of creation you're focusing on.

[papillon]

But without replay value, there are even less people who will replay the game, since there is nothing new there. In fact, by giving in minimum effort to add replay value, you ensure that your effort won't be distracted from making the first playthrough good.

There are people who want to play a VN only once. They are highly unlikely to replay no matter what you do. So any effort you spend on replayability is wasted on them and will not affect their decision to buy or play the first time around. Net result is neutral.

There are people who want to play a VN many times regardless of whether you've changed anything or not. (Some people do, you know!) Any effort you spend on replayability is somewhat wasted on them in terms of convincing them to replay, because they were going to do it anyway, but MIGHT give them a small bonus in discovering something new the second time through. (Since if it's a 'minimal effort' change, they might not even notice.) Net result is mostly neutral with very slight positive.

There are people who want to play a VN many times but only if there are meaningful new things to discover. If you tell them your game has meaningful new things to discover on replay, and actually those things are minimal effort changes, then they may "slog through" your game multiple times and be really angry at you afterwards because of the amount of time that was wasted. Net result is negative.

If you use 'minimal effort' to add replayability and don't tell anyone about it, then the end result is very slightly positive because the people who do replay may discover the bonuses. If you claim your game has high replayability when it doesn't, the end result is worse than if you hadn't tried to add replayability to your game in the first place.

@papillon:
Ok I thought the goal is obvious, but I will explain. The thread start out with Lesleigh essentially asking about the methods to add replay value. Then you also mentioned that well, there is a problem with the standard method of branching out near the end, because in that case the player won't replay the game, they simply save before that point.

I'm sorry, but you misunderstood. My post was stating that most VN players DO NOT WANT to have to replay things that are highly similar and will do their best to avoid it.

I was not stating that branching out near the end is a problem. I was using end-branching as an example of how natural player behavior is demonstrated. They want to play the new parts. They do not want to replay the old parts if they're going to be exactly the same. Players attempt to minimise the time spent doing pointless things, because they want to have fun.

My post was not talking about "loopholes", but answering the original question, which was "do people prefer paths to be very different if they're going to play again". The answer is generally YES.

There are players who don't want to play more than one path in a visual novel even if they're very, very different because they still consider that to be replaying. Most players are happy to play multiple paths but they quickly give up and quit if the paths are almost exactly the same except with a different love interest in place of the first.

It caught me by surprise when suddenly people start to argue that these are cruel to the players, considering that most are in fact standard practice that are widely accepted.

Except that this isn't true. It's more like the opposite of true. Some of them may be standard in some completely different medium but they are actively considered to be negative things within visual novels. You mentioned disabling skipping, for example. Many other video games do not have the concept of skipping at all. However, it's a standard feature that is absolutely expected to be built into any VN released in the past couple of decades, and intentionally taking it out will produce an uproar.

The only one of your original 10 'tips' that could be considered "standard practice" here, at a glance, is #2. Some of them would cause complete outrage in ANY video game. Others are appropriate for hunting for 'secret endings' in a gameplay-heavy title where people are expected to be replaying multiple times just to enjoy the gameplay and might stumble across some secrets in the meantime, but are really not appropriate within this medium.

VNs do not work exactly the same as other games and trying to directly apply something from an FPS or RPG can be totally opposed to making players happy. Back in the arcade days there were rumors that a certain game had to be beaten through multiple times in a row without stopping in order to unlock the real ending (From what I now hear, this was just a myth.) "Beat it twice through" is a totally different proposition in an action game than it is in a VN. Players aren't going to react the same way.

[Lesleigh63]

Thanks everyone. Interesting discussion even if it got a little heated. This was useful as I'm still trying to get my head around the nuances of the visual novel compared to a traditional linear plot.

[Tempus]

ETA: Also here is another sort of replay. If the game is really, really good? I may not replay it myself (because I have a *lot* of games to play and not so much time), but I'll get my friends to play it and then we'll do lots of analysis of it together. For example, I have to get a one of my buddies to play Analogue and Hate Plus so we can have long conversations about it. And then there is the other "replay"--if a game is really good? I may not replay that particular game, but I will play subsequent games by the same team.

Yeah, I've found myself dedicating a lot of time to just talking about some games I like because there's so much to talk about. Ultimately if the content is valuable then it doesn't really matter how long it is. I cut things that don't think add value or distract from the essence of the game.

[Elmiwisa]

Ok, I am replying to trooper first because I think there is a huge disagreement in the definition of the term here, and we might actually talking about different thing altogether.

@trooper:
The term "replay" here is in question. I am very sure that, if you simply play a new game by the same developer because you like their old game, it is NOT replay, not by normal meaning of the term. Just go to any review site, and if a game is praise of having replay value, it means, to the very least, that you would want to play the same game again.
Now the thread is talking about adding replay value. That means it have to comes as a conscious decision to give incentive for the play again. So replaying the very same content with no changes just because the player like the game might be considered "replay", but is still irrelevant to this thread because it is a natural consequence of making good game, not from an extra effort in trying to give the player to play again.
For something to be considered to be "adding replay value", it should:
-Be part of a conscious effort from the creator. So the following are out: playing again because the player just like it, reading fanfic that follow the original storyline, discussing theories on forum regarding the plot, reinterpret event because based on details already presented the first time but might be dismissed as unimportant.
-Require the player slog through a large chunk of the same content again. If the player do not have to sit through the same thing again and again, how on earth is it RE-play? Just because they happened to click on a Start Game button on the screen? This means that the following are out too: completely different storyline branch out from near the start that have nothing to do with each other.
-Give sufficient incentive to the player, usually in the form of new content.

===============

@Trick:
I already explained my meaning of replay as above. If the player don't slog through a significant amount of the same content, then it is not replay anymore, it's just a different story that get packaged into the same...uh, application....There can be a lot of new content, and some of the old content might be removed, but the significant part of it is still there.
And no, I explicitly said to not argue against the negative reviewer, twice. It's like you don't even read my post at all. Arguing against reviewer just give you bad publicity, there is no points. That's why you should rig the game, to trip them up if they try, yet remain uninvolved in public. To your restaurant example, if you were to run the restaurant, you should change a few of the ingredient that are cheap to change, such as onion and the sauce. Then when some disgrunted customer try to bash you and claim that you use just reuse the same ingredient, your other customer who like the burger will attack him and point out that he does not even get the fact right. And once he is discredited, his other valid points, such as the meat is the same, will be ignored. You don't have to even do anything. It is even easier with VN, because they are long, can be full of hidden stuff, and reviewer don't have time to experience everything.
I am not sure why you have issue with the ideas to working against scathing reviewer anyway. You are the creator, and they are, by design, your antagonist. They are not on your side. They are not the critic who points out flaws so that you can improve them; not the tester who alert you to problems. No they are the one who bring to light flaws you already know but can't fix which you are trying to hide. They will ruin you. As a player, I appreciate their work a lot and be glad that I can avoid wasting time on bad games. As a creator, you will just have to stop them, because that is just how the roles work.

===============

@Sharm:
Sorry about the error with the name. But I still read the correct page (lucca's house on chronopedia) so my point still stand. And my reply that some people are arguing that replay is a bad thing is directed toward Greeny and papillon.

First, I want to clarify on the "meaningful" issue, because now it is clear that we are talking about different thing. You're talking about choice that feels meaningful to the player. I'm talking about choice that are MECHANICALLY meaningful-that is do they have any significant effect to the flow of the story. And when it comes to the question of how you, as a creator, spend resources, that is a much more relevant question. If you make choices that are mechanically meaningless, that means you do not have to spend any resources on: coding work, designing a stats system for it, balancing the stats changes, playtesting to ensure there is no undesirable effects unaccounted for. On the other hand, whether the player feel meaningful or not is just a matter of writing, and there should not be significant differences in resources. Your example on breakfast and meteor is precisely the opposite of what I advised: you have to spend serious resource to make a mechanically meaningful choice that the player find meaningless. On the other hand, let's say there is a choice on whether to help a lost old lady to find the house. If you don't, someone else help her eventually, and whatever the player's choice is, she are incapable of remembering due to her condition. This is an example of a choice that are meaningful to the player, and yet is completely meaningless mechanically, which is the best of both world: the player feels good, but you don't have to spend serious resources on it.

Now I try not to bring in examples that have been announced on this forum before, because I was afraid that once I point out that game X use method Y people will say that "which is the reason why that game is bad", and then the whole thread become a flame war. But since you praise LLTQ, so I read up a lot about it on its wiki, and I would like to point out that it is an example to show that it does use the method I described here, and yet you love it, which just support my point further that you probably are just thinking of worst example by games that use these method and fumble. LLTQ uses method #8. Oh, did not train Lore? Then you don't get to see this dialogue. Train Lore, then you did not get around to raise Trade, so you don't get that extra options. Try to train both of those? Then you don't have enough time to get Court Manner sufficient for that scene. And of course, for every single playthrough, there are lots and lots of event you will see again and again. There are never enough time to get all your stats high, so of course, many sets of scenes are mutually exclusive.

Disabling skipping simply should not affect the 1st playthrough at all. Unless your story is already bad, the player have no reasons to just wantonly skip through text on their 1st playthrough, so it makes no sense to think that this somehow affect 1st playthrough. If they get annoyed on the 2nd playthrough and turn off the game, they still already played through the game once unaffected. The whole point of disabling skipping is so that the player have to slog through the same content again and again on subsequent playthrough. If you want to skip on the 1st playthrough anyway, how about a simple inversion to the usual paradigm? Allow player to skip through UNseen text (which if skipped, will still get marked as unseen), but disable skipping for seen text. Then you can skip all you want in the 1st playthrough. Just a thought experiment here. Let's say at the start of the game, you get to choose to learn to comprehend Orc language or something else. If you learn Orc language, whenever you encounter some Orcc, you get like 2-3 lines of dialogue of the Orcs conversing among themselves which reveal significant information that change the interpretation of event ("oh so I was the monster all along to them") but is otherwise have no effects on the plot until the end, and there are say a dozen such encounter throughout the game. It will also unlock a new ending. Now let's say you did not choose Orc language the first time. Now you start a new game and choose Orc language, would you rather have the game: (a) play through the story normally with now a few line of extra dialogue, and unlock the new ending? or (b) display all the new dialogue from the Orcs, then warp immediately to the new ending? I would gladly choose (a), but your idea of just letting player skipping through seen text is equivalent to (b).

================

@papillon:
I think perhaps the word "minimal effort" sounds negative. But in fact it just means putting in as little effort as you can get away with. And surely you must agree that it is more economical that way? I totally agree with you that it is important to take into account the fact that player don't like if it everything is played out exactly the same. Hence, try to make thing just different enough to satisfy them while still minimize the amount of effort involved. If your scene can be reused, why write a new one? If your minigame can be made fresh and more challenging by changing a single variable, while bother making a different one? I really think we have a disagreement on the concept of replay here, as I have stated in reply to trooper. If the player do not slog through significant chunks of the same content again, it is not replay anymore. The trick is to make them happy while still going through the same content, and make sure the effort spend on making the part that is new is minimum.
In a minigame for example, it is very easy to make a minigame fresh with almost no works on your part. Simply by making a minigame fresh you can easily make it unskippable with no complains from the players. If it is an action sequence, perhaps reduce the amount of time the player have. Perhaps it is a jigsaw puzzle, you just need to increase the number of parts. If it is a RPG battle, make the boss have higher HP. In all case, you just need to change a single variables, and is enough to make the thing fresh again. You could add a bit more effort and say, have some line of dialogue changes to acknowledge the player performance. Again it is just a 5 mins effort that suddenly make it worthwhile to play through it again.
Now for a narrative example, let's say the VN have a choice that have little effect on the story. You can add 30 lines of dialogue right after the choice that talk about the choice they just made. Or you can add 10 lines of dialogue that is sprinkle throughout the VN to give subtle nod to the choice they made. In the first case, they will think that this is a pointless choice that is never mentioned again. In the second case, they will think that their choices have long term consequences throughout the VN. Yet 10 lines of dialogue is minimal effort that give better result than 30 lines of dialogue. And of course, if you go with the first case, the player simply reload the game at that point to see all the lines if they were to pick a different one; in the second case, the player is forced through the games again.
And the list is really very much standard practice in other video game. I probably just did not describe them well enough and it sounds worse than it does in practice. Certainly, they might not all applicable to VN, but if they can get away with it somewhere else, surely players could not possibly get mad right?

[Darkmoonfire]

Elmiwasa: You do realize that disabling skipping will not make players reread text they don't want to reread. It makes them button mash.
The real trick to achieving replay is to make the players want to reread your text and not to force them. Disabling skipping will just tick people off.

[TrickWithAKnife]

The definition of "replay" doesn't actually matter, except for responding to the original post.

Perhaps I missed the parts where you denounce arguing with reviewers. I did, however, notice the lengthy post you made about putting in just enough variation to be able to try and discredit reviewers. If anyone needs to resort to that, their VN can't have much going for it.

The majority of your advice relies on the assumption that the people playing and reviewing your game are not going to be very bright.
Unfortunately for you, the opposite is usually true. I decided to make a list of my own. I'd love to see anyone try to prove them wrong.

You can't manipulate a reviewer into changing their opinion after already playing your game.

You can't discredit a reviewer and think prospective players will take that as a sign that your VN is worth playing.

You can't throw in a lot of meaningless choices and think no-one is going to notice.

You can't force the players to do things they don't want to and expect that they will want to keep playing.

Reviewers will go easier on you if you actually do the opposite of what you have advised other people to do. Sorry, but I've never heard a more in-depth collection of terrible advice for VN devs.

[Sharm]

Yes, every time I said meaningful, I meant to the player. Go back and read what I said earlier with that in mind. Mechanically meaningful is only relevant in that it takes more time to do, and I agree that you should keep that as minimal as possible. I also think that adding a choice just because it's a choice is only adding work for the coder and diluting the value of the game to the player.

I'm tired of arguing with you. I'll say "this specific thing should cause players to get frustrated and angry at you, here's why." You say "That's not true, here's a situation where no one would get upset!" I reply with "I would get very upset with that specific situation." and you say "But that's impossible because your feelings should go like this." You have far too little data to dismiss any result, even if you're certain it must be an outlier. You especially shouldn't dismiss my opinions when talking to me. In the orc example if you coded the game the way it's normally done you would get choices (a) and (b) at the same time and it would be up to the player which one they wanted to do. I don't think that choice should be taken away simply because you think (a) is a better game. That doesn't matter, it's up to the player what they should do. Taking that choice away just because you want me to play (a) makes me mad at your game, even if I would have chosen (a) on my own if given the choice.

At this point we need to be arguing about things more concrete. So. I've never actually played Long Live the Queen but yes, it does use point number 8. If you look over your replies you'll see that not one of us ever said point 8 was a bad idea or that you shouldn't do it. I will be specific now and tell you that I have a problem with points 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 10, and a lot of those I only have problems with because of things like disabling skipping, marking new things as already read, disabling rollback and other such methods that force the player to play things your way and not theirs. That is what we're all arguing about, and please, if you can find a game where they've done those things that we have specifically told you are bad but that you think are good, let us know. I'd love to see a concrete way to do that thing where the player shouldn't hate it.

[Greeny]

Okay, let's slow down and rewind. This whole thing boils down to one big misunderstanding.

Now the thread is talking about adding replay value. That means it have to comes as a conscious decision to give incentive for the play again. So replaying the very same content with no changes just because the player like the game might be considered "replay", but is still irrelevant to this thread because it is a natural consequence of making good game, not from an extra effort in trying to give the player to play again.
For something to be considered to be "adding replay value", it should:
-Be part of a conscious effort from the creator. So the following are out: playing again because the player just like it, reading fanfic that follow the original storyline, discussing theories on forum regarding the plot, reinterpret event because based on details already presented the first time but might be dismissed as unimportant.
-Require the player slog through a large chunk of the same content again. If the player do not have to sit through the same thing again and again, how on earth is it RE-play? Just because they happened to click on a Start Game button on the screen? This means that the following are out too: completely different storyline branch out from near the start that have nothing to do with each other.
-Give sufficient incentive to the player, usually in the form of new content.

I don't know if anyone else sees it, but the main reason this debate is going on is because you're operating under what I believe to be a number of very wrong assumptions, or misunderstandings. Come to think of it, the rest made a few too.

Elimwasa's Assumption #1: This thread is about how to forcibly add replay value.
Indeed, if a forced effort is a requirement, that calls for some distinction pretty much as you outlined above. But here's the thing, that's not what this thread is limited to. The question was,

Is it better if the paths are quite different to each other so you get a feeling of a new experience?

meaning that replay that is not caused by some mechanic is not discounted.
Essentially, we want to know what best gets players to replay... is it a certain mechanic? A good plot? Minigames? Lovable characters?

For the purposes of further discussion, let's call what you have outlined, "mechanical replay value" and players rereading just because they liked it / without creator input: "natural replay value".

===

Everyone else's Assumtion #1: Elimwasa is denouncing "natural replay value".
If Elimwasa is under the impression that this thread was solely about methods to forcibly add replay value, it seems Elimwasa was only awknowledging argument about mechanical methods. Everyone else took that to mean Elimwasa is saying "natural replay value" is out altogether, but I'm starting to think that's not the case.

===

Elimwasa's Assumption #2: Adding "mechanical replay value" does not detract from "natural replay value".
It all depends on the method used, of course, but as it happens some added methods do run a risk of detracting from the "natural replay value". I'd say that a complete and satisfying experience on the first playthrough adds to "natural replay value". Good story? Let's read again sometime. This means, that taking some elements from that experience, and locking them off based on certain choices/mechanics, does run a risk of taking away from that natural replay value.

I'm not saying "mechanical replay value" is bad, per se, but I am going to claim this:
Natural replay value is always better than mechanical replay value.

One good reason I'd use to support this claim is that there are more people interested in replaying naturally than there are people who replay because of mechanics (the so-called completionists).

Another good reason is that "first-playthrough experience". With "natural replay value", the game will have been good and satisfying even without a replay. With "mechanical replay value", you might lock some important content off on the first run, meaning if the player does not replay, they will have had less of a satisfying experience.

===

I hope that clears things up for everyone a little bit?
Anyways, with that distinction made, I think it would be easier to discuss the issue.

Personally, I'm not such a big fan of mechanical replay value, but if you must have it, I would say "add, don't lock off".
Make every choice have a meaningful result, and every ending satisfying. Rather than adding choices where only the "right answer" gives you some interesting content, try for making both options give a meaningful, equivalent result.

Another good way for mechanical replay value is if you have puzzles, to make the solution randomised. Meaning if the player goes back and tries at the puzzle a second time, they'll still have to use their brain and think. That's mental stimulation, which is positive.