Story progress meters?

[Kinmoku]

Hey all,

I was wondering what everyone's thoughts are on story/ game progress meters? You know, those "% completed" kind of things that show up when you load up a save file, or go on the main menu.

Personally, I'm not too fussed about them... it breaks the illusion for me a little, but I've heard a lot of people talk about them and appreciate them. Do you think they'd work for a visual novel?

[Iylae]

I suppose this depends on many factors:

What do you term as "complete"? A single story/path? All paths completed? All dialogues seen? All "achievements" performed? All unlockables unlocked?

I think a progress meter only really works for something which is rather linear, especially kinetic novels.

Even then, do you want to know that you're about to finish the story? I really dislike reaching the end of a book because I know it's going to end soon.

[Kinmoku]

I guess I meant in the way most games do it, eg. MGSV and Yakuza, so a % of the whole game's content. You may finish a route, but still have missed 80% of the game that's available.

When I "completed" Hatoful Boyfriend, I'd really only finished one route, which was about 10% of the whole game. I think in that case, I'd have preferred to have known there was still 90% of the game left. Ha, I've totally flip-flopped!

[paradigmshifty]

I quite like to have some idea of where I am, but I'd rather not have an exact percentage.

Something like Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 can be subtle, and although anything like this can break immersion a little, it is helpful for my playing habits.

For example if I'm playing a game that is over 2 hours long I will tend to play in several sessions on different days and I like to have some idea that I'll complete the game in one more session. So if I see something like "Act 3" and I feel like the story is coming to the end I know I should keep playing until I get to the end in one session.


edit - just saw the post about branches and the possibility of a player completely missing a large part of the game. I think yes, after the credits, when the game is over it's good to give the player the information that there is still more to be explored! Unless there is an artistic reason not to do that, in which case you can always present that information separately to the game itself (e.g. a walkthrough posted online).

[Iylae]

I'd rather have an achievement style checklist that may (or may not) give hints to what I've missed. If it comes with a % then ok, but just a % on it's own is too vague to be useful imo.

[Ghost of Crux]

I'm never a 100%'er but I can see why people might want to do it. Hatoful Boyfriend takes it through the number of endings, which you can probably do? Like use End. 1 - End. something and imply somewhere in some menu that there are x number of endings, and that the player has gotten x of them. Admittedly, for this to work you'll have to shove it to the player's face that this is Ending number X, and NOT the only one.

Another way I see people do a "percentage completion" is by CG gallery. Basically if you filled them all, you can reasonably deduct that you've gotten all the endings. Of course, this only works if you have a lot of CGs...

I think Acts/Chapters work if we're talking about a particular path. If we're talking about completing all of the paths, however, it's probably not very helpful.

[ketskari]

Days, chapters, acts, parts and so on can give the player a good indication, as paradigmshifty mentions. Although you have to bring a chapter or act to a natural close to avoid breaking immersion. Or sometimes you want to force a break in the story... give the player a moment to think about the closing events of Act III, for instance. Anyway, for a very long project, a table of contents screen might be helpful.

In my current project, there's an extras feature that says how many scenes of the game have been unlocked. I decided to include this because there is some significant branching.

Otherwise, I think it's fair to give some indication how far along the player is, especially for longer projects. After all, with a prose novel, you can always see how far into a book you are.

[Shinoki]

Those % things are nice for me, but I prefer them to be in the extras/gallery area--like % of CG obtained, % of music heard (like in Little Busters, some soundtracks are only in certain routes), % of routes complete.

[Rosstin]

I think it's good if you can somehow indicate completion so the player has a vague idea of how far they are.

[Kinmoku]

I like the idea of the CG gallery... gives you something to work towards Also, achievements are cool but pretty standard. It's nice to have extra things in the game that show you progress OR reward you for playing.

[MorchellaGames]

I think Cinders has a pretty interesting system to show completion, though, apparently, it is not super-obvious how to get each of those endings/variations.
Here are the possibilities: http://cinders.wikia.com/wiki/Four_Endings

So, there are two things to consider here:
- The completion rate and how it is expressed
- The feedback on how to make that rate progress.

Some examples outside of Cinders and the others mentioned.

Virtue's Last Reward
- Completion rate and choices are obviously mapped, yet some endings require that other endings be done first
- See this article

Final Fantasy X-2
- You see a percentage in your game
- This percentage increases as you complete events, but it may not be clear how to get this to 100%
- Here's a quick guide on getting 100%, so you can see what it implicates

I'm sure we could find many other variations of these systems.

Ultimately, the way you implement these two aspects is entirely up to you, and will please/displease certain types of players, so there is no "right way" to do this.

[Kinmoku]

Man, I love Virtue's Last Reward. The first time I got an ending, though, I was so disappointed... "that's it?!" But then you see the tree and give it another go. I guess at that point, the game really gets going. Same with Hatoful Boyfriend, I think, though I've still not "completed" that.

Cinders sounds really good, just from briefly looking at all those possible endings! I haven't played it, but it seems really deep.

But you're right, it's hard to appease every kind of player with this. I'm not a huge fan of playing every single route, but I did eventually warm to VLR and really appreciated what they went for. I guess I'm more inclined to play every route when I can see it clearly like that.

[Katy133]

I've used progress/timeline bars in my visual novels Three Guys That Paint (which divided the progress by days) and Must Love Jaws (which was divided by scenes/location switches).