What do you think about "courage" meters?

[haleigh]

Basically, with each choice the MC makes, they either get a point or they don't depending on whether or not the choice involved courage/bravery. Around the end of the VN, in order for the MC to get the good endings, they're going to need enough courage points to take that path or else the good path is grayed out and they get the bad ending.

I'm sure other VN's have used this method before but I feel like it'd get a bit frustrating. I don't see any other options though, especially when the MC's choices to take action or not directly influence the ending.

[Sakai]

Can work however if the player knows how it works e.g. "My courage meter is high I'm gonna get the good ending!" Will pretty much kill the fun of surprise on what ending you will get if you understand what I mean

[Haze]

To answer you question posed in the thread title, a courage meter sounds fine as long as the reason why not enough courage means a bad ending makes since. For example, if enough courage means that the MC will be brave enough to try and kill the bad guy, and not enough courage means the MC stays home while the bad buy destroys the world, then it makes since. Or maybe, enough courage gives the MC the confidence to ask the girl he likes out and get the good ending where they date. Things like that.

I'm sure other VN's have used this method before but I feel like it'd get a bit frustrating.

Coding a points system may get frustrating depending on the amount of choices you have. You're probably going to have to put

Code: Select all

$ courage_points = 0

or something like that at the beginning of your game, and then

Code: Select all

$ courage_points += 1 #or whatever number you want

after every choices that ups your courage.

Then, at the end, you can do

Code: Select all

menu:
if courage_points == 5: #or whatever amount of courage gets the good ending
    "Good ending choice":
        jump good_ending
    "Bad ending choice":
        jump bad_ending
else:
    "Bad ending choice":
        jump bad_ending

Sorry if I'm repeating coding knowledge you already know.

The only thing that might be frustrating, as I mentioned, is putting

Code: Select all

$ courage_points += 1 #or whatever number you want

after each and every choice that is supposed to up your courage. If you forgot to put the code once, and players need to get every single courage point to get the good ending, then the good ending will be impossible since there won't be enough points. So, just double check your code, and you'll be fine.

[xavimat]

Instead of considering good/bad endings, I was thinking of a similar thing to develop the MC personality using different traits.
You can have variables that change depending on the choices and some menus present options according to that:

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$ books = 0
$ soccer = 0

menu:
    "What do you want to do?"
    "Read a book":
        $ books += 1
    "Play soccer":
        $ soccer += 1
    "Do nothing":
        "How boring..."
        
# Later in your game ...

menu:
    "What do you want to do?"
    "Participate in a reading contest" if books > 0:
        jump reading_contest
    "Read a book":
        $ books += 1
        jump normal_day
    "Play soccer":
        $ soccer += 1
        jump normal_day
    "Participate in a soccer competition" if soccer > 0:
        jump soccer_competition
    "Do nothing":
        "How boring again..."

As you see, the second menu still lets the player to read a book of play soccer. But the more "dedicated" options are only possible if the player has chosen before a kind of activity and not other.
Also, the other characters can react differently, according with the personality built by the player.

[haleigh]

To answer you question posed in the thread title, a courage meter sounds fine as long as the reason why not enough courage means a bad ending makes since. For example, if enough courage means that the MC will be brave enough to try and kill the bad guy, and not enough courage means the MC stays home while the bad buy destroys the world, then it makes since. Or maybe, enough courage gives the MC the confidence to ask the girl he likes out and get the good ending where they date. Things like that.

I'm sure other VN's have used this method before but I feel like it'd get a bit frustrating.

Coding a points system may get frustrating depending on the amount of choices you have. You're probably going to have to put

Code: Select all

$ courage_points = 0

or something like that at the beginning of your game, and then

Code: Select all

$ courage_points += 1 #or whatever number you want

after every choices that ups your courage.

Then, at the end, you can do

Code: Select all

menu:
if courage_points == 5: #or whatever amount of courage gets the good ending
    "Good ending choice":
        jump good_ending
    "Bad ending choice":
        jump bad_ending
else:
    "Bad ending choice":
        jump bad_ending

Sorry if I'm repeating coding knowledge you already know.

The only thing that might be frustrating, as I mentioned, is putting

Code: Select all

$ courage_points += 1 #or whatever number you want

after each and every choice that is supposed to up your courage. If you forgot to put the code once, and players need to get every single courage point to get the good ending, then the good ending will be impossible since there won't be enough points. So, just double check your code, and you'll be fine.

I meant frustrating for the player, since they'll probably have no knowledge that their choices in the beginning are effecting the end and they'd probably have to go back and make a whole new set of choices in order to get the good without being really sure what the outcomes might be. Of course someone can always make a walk-through.
And thanks for the coding!! I had a faint idea that it worked something like that but I didn't know you could set it to certain values.

[Haze]

I meant frustrating for the player, since they'll probably have no knowledge that their choices in the beginning are effecting the end and they'd probably have to go back and make a whole new set of choices in order to get the good without being really sure what the outcomes might be.

Ack, I'm sorry. Let me answer your question properly.

It could be frustrating for the player if you don't give any hints that they need to select choices that up their courage. For example, you could have a part early in the game where someone gives a long "speech" to the MC that basically amounts to "Only courage will get you anywhere in the world!", which could hint to the player that courage=good in your game. Or perhaps you could say something in your game description, although that would be a little less obvious. If you don't say anything anywhere at all, then yeah, I agree that the player could get a bit frustrated.

[Kensela]

In my opinion unless the player knows that they have to get the most courage points from the start it is really going to frustrate the players. Also another thing I was wondering is what would a person consider 'courage', because what one person may deem as courageous another might think it was just plain stupid.

[Katta]

In my opinion unless the player knows that they have to get the most courage points from the start it is really going to frustrate the players.

But wouldn't it kill all the fun? I mean, I've been playing a game right now where it's shown how your decisions affect your stats and affection points and you're told directly which stats you need for whom and you also choose the route at some point - and I just couldn't play the way I wanted, I had to collect the hearts(((
Imo the best way is not to show anything, but make it so that 1) your decisions logically affect the events, 2) all outcomes are interesting, they may be sad and everyone can die or you end up alone, but the player may still have a good experience.

[rabcor]

All game elements can be turned into a good thing depending on how they're handled.

I prefer dictating what choices the player can make by their past choices (directly) rather than via a points system.

It delivers exactly the same result, but feels less artificial to the player.

(The end result is still going to be: "If the player chose these choices, he can choose this choice, otherwise he only has that choice", it's just a matter of how the player experiences it.)

Look at world of warcraft for example. They introduced a penalty system that gave you reduced experience after a certain amount of time spent outside of taverns. The players HATED this. What Blizzard did then was change how they explained it, and instead of penalizing the players for playing longer, they just gave them a bonus for logging out in taverns. It was 100% the same system, but the players experienced it extremely differently.

Think a little bit about this. There are often more enjoyable ways to do things from the end user's perspective. Your best bet is to have someone test the system and see how they like it (someone who wont be afraid of giving you negative feedback)

[Biomass]

You need a feedback loop to let the player know whats up. Outright telling them their courage score would break immersion, so what some games do is they trigger certain minievents or give you some item that effectively tells them their progress.

For example, on day 10 the protagonist achieves courage score 5 so on day 11 stalker B sends him a love letter telling him how brave and dreamy he is and how she's always watching.

[TehTumbleweed]

What if you made it hidden?

Or made it a hidden bonus to MC. So, for example, say that MC made a courageous choice, they get a bonus that NPCs will see but the player will not. And you can hint at it with an NPC mention. (e.g. "You are so brave, I couldn't imagine doing something like that." or "that was very courageous of you, I like that" (+5 to particular NPC romance and -5 to particular NPC romance for thinking it was stupid) kinda thing.