How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

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khancat
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How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#1 Post by khancat »

Although everyone has their own opinion, I personally enjoy dating sims. Some had deep, overarching storylines. Some did not. Then I found myself wanting to create my own.

While I'm partial to stat-raising, I know that a lot of people do not like them. I want to avoid the negatives of stat-raising, but also still have them?

I'll explain what I want to do. Let's say that the main character decides to join the sports club in the fall. He can join the baseball team by spring if he proves that he is capable. He must raise his fitness to do that (by lifting weights or jogging at the park). A possible romantic relationship may develop if the MC does well on the baseball team.

Another example is that the main character wants to get into a good music program at a particular university. Of course, for him to do that, he has to practice his instruments. I've placed this under a creativity stat.

Doing a lot of activities can result in stress which leads the MC to fail to obtain the stat and may even result in loss of stat points. Relaxing can help reduce that.

I want to avoid the annoying save-reload-save-reload conundrum that occurs in a lot of stat raising dating sims. I thought about making the minimum bar low of the stat raising. I still want the game to be story driven and feel organic. I feel like stat-raising can still feel organic if done well.

I guess what I'm aiming for is use the stat-raising mechanic to allow the MC to achieve his goal, or do well in sports, or be a decent contributor at the mathathon. Not: get 70+ fitness to get so-and-so's best ending!

I'm not sure if anything I'm saying makes a lot of sense. If anyone can offer any advice, I would be more than happy to receive it.

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Re: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#2 Post by truefaiterman »

What you may want is to not make the stat-raising obvious, and work it more like a visual novel instead of a "typical" simdate. The first idea that comes to my mind is to not mention the stats that much ingame, and talking about it in a more in-universe way (Example: It doesn't feel the same if the game says "You got +10 Athletics" than "You're getting stronger, and you can even see your muscles grow!"). You can even have NPCs commenting on your stats instead of having a number-based menu (Example: If you have -50 Intelligence, the girl at the library says "It seems you still have trouble with your studies, take care", but if you have +50, "Oh, you've got really good at this, keep up the good work!").
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Re: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#3 Post by Agashi »

This is a really interesting question to me because I'm trying to do something similar with my otome game. It's tough trying to incorporate the stat-raising element when you don't want to stress players out about having ENOUGH of the stat they need to accomplish their goal. I sympathize. :(

I've tried keeping mine subtle by: A) Keeping the bar low, like what you were saying, B ) Giving LOTS of opportunities for players to raise said stats, including during regular dialogues with characters, and C) "Hiding" the stat bars during regular gameplay. I'm not sure if this is possible in Ren'Py, but I want to have them visible in the pause menu. In other words: there, but not in the players' faces all the time. That way, the ones who want an immersive game experience can have it while the power-gaming min-maxers can keep track of their progress as well.
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Re: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#4 Post by Yolo400 »

As above, use stats; don't make it obvious.

Or, make statistics an integral part of the enjoyment. Where boosting brings noticeable differences, though if you're doing that, you might as well make an RPG.
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Re: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#5 Post by Katta »

I love stat-raisers, and I actually prefer to see the stats (when they're raised, by how much, when they're checked) because hiding them quite often makes the game too difficult to complete without a walk-through. Making the requirements lower on one hand helps to avoid this problem, on the other hand it makes the stat-raising part less meaningful (f.ex. you want to join the baseball club and you increase your fitness enough for that in a couple of months, but then you have 4 months of stat-raising ahead of you with nothing to raise and that's irritating). And the phrases instead of numbers are even worse because they take a lot of time, so when they're repeated 100 times, it's awful.
So I don't think you can actually hide a stat-raiser in a good way and anyway why do it at all? There're different people who enjoy different types of games so why not focus on those who like sims?

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Re: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#6 Post by slashbunnychan »

I'm currently designing a dating sim game using stat raising, and I plan on using another dating sim game - "Backstage Pass" (mainly GxB, but there are a ton of other friendship, independent and GxG routes) - and its stats raising system as inspiration for my own.

In "Backstage Pass" there is a page that lists all your current stats (fitness, intelligence, popularity, GPA and so on) and then when it's time to plan out the week ahead (go to class, work, study, sleep, and more) your stats change (working out raises fitness, working raises creativity, studying and tutoring raises your int. and GPA, and sleeping/being forced to take a break from too much stress makes some of your stats drop slightly). Also neglecting certain stats makes them drop over time. There is never a notice that pops up saying "you gained +10 in popularity" when you are blogging online, but you will get a message saying "with all my blogging my popularity went up", and when you go to tutoring if your GPA is 2.5 or up the tutor says "you are doing fine" and if it's over 3.0 they say "you are doing excellent" and so on.

I like that style of showing that your stats are increasing without little numbers showing up on the screen or the dialogue box saying "+10 to fitness" or whatever. The subtle hint of your stats going up and the other characters recognizing that your stats have gone up is the better of the two.

That's just my opinion and how I plan on doing it.

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Re: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#7 Post by Katy133 »

Some points to keep in mind:

1) Avoid having the player do stat grinding.

A way to test whether or not your game's getting "grind-y" is if you play test it and begin repeatedly pressing the skip button to make all the stat-raising scenes go by faster.

2) Use brevity.

This is linked to point 1, because giving the game lots of filler will bore the player. Try to avoid long timelines where nothing happens except stat-raising. Have important events happen most of the time. Build character. Have the story progress. Try to tell a lot with a little.

3) Don't punish the player for not playing the game the way YOU want it played.

Even if the player doesn't get enough "points" to unlock the romance options, at least make the alternative endings satisfying or with a sense of closure. The hero may not have found love, but they still learned something from their journey, right? Rocky may not have won the match, but he still showed everyone how strong and determined a fighter he was.

The three above points list the three main pitfalls I tend to notice in stat-raising dating sims: Boring stat grinding where not a lot happens, and (unless you use peek at a walkthrough) may not even lead to an ending you were looking for.
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Re: How to Avoid the Pitfalls of Stat-Raising Dating Sim

#8 Post by somestrangecircus »

The biggest issue I've had with some of the stat-raisers I've played is that once you reach the stats you need for your targeted ending, you basically have nothing to do until the in-game clock runs out, or there isn't enough of a plot to keep the stat-grinding interesting, which really both feel like plot issues. Long Live the Queen successfully avoided both of these and was really fun to boot. I guess for me it's an issue of keeping my attention in between all the stat-raising.

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