System of measuring the sympathy in game

[Sharane]

I wonder which system of affecting the end you use in otome or in game where the player can choose between characters. I set game variable for all available characters and then I add "points" according the player´s choices.
First, I measured the sympathy of player so I knew which character she/he wants to end up with. But then I realized this system supposed that all characters want to date the player. In fact, it meant if player was interested in character A, character A met player often and started to feel it this way too.
Now I think measuring the sympathy of characters is better. They like you according to your behaviour and if you don´t have enough "points", they don´t want date you. On the other hand, for me as a player, it´s nice if character I like shows me some affection. But of course, character´s reactions can be different as the "points" rise.

And what system do you use? What do you think is best? May be it´s obvious and boring question but I´m really curious about it Or do you measure sympathy completely different?

[rabcor]

Normally rather than "sympathy" i think people use "affection" as a measurement.

I think a decent way to go about it would be to have an affection measurement for each character, then they'll ask the player out (rather than vice versa) and the player can say yes or no (which would eliminate the need of having such a measurement for the player itself.)

The problem here is that there is no "right" or "best" way to do something like this as it depends a whole lot on what kind of game it is.


I think there's an example somewhere in the cookbook... Have a look at this.