Should you be allowed to Rollback after decisions?

[gundestiny]

Hey everyone!

I'm just curious about what people think about rolling back

So I'm making a VN (surprise surprise) and I was wondering how many people actually prefer the option to roll back over a decision you've made, or block it once its been selected. [Note: I have a fair few decisions in my game ^^"]
I'm tempted to disallow rollback after you make a decision but I don't really know how popular that is with the players.
It also runs on an affection point system so if you feel you didn't make the best option, do you just soldier on, or rollback/reload?

Your opinions will be much appreciated!
Cheers!~

[hugolino]

I haven't been playing ren'ai games very long at all, but when I've done so I've never saved games at all but I have used rollback. I suppose if I saved my games I wouldn't rely on rollback so much though.

[curry nochi rice]

No.... it will create bugs if one allows that...

[VenusEclipse]

I feel the decision I make without rollback will be more important. With rollback, I just go backwards if I reconsidered to change my choice. I know a few people who played my vn and they are very into making the right decision when a choice pop up, and they don't know about the rollback feature. I personally save my games before an important choice, since I am used to that with non-renpy games. I guess to summarize what I think personally, I don't mind either way.

[Jake]

I'm tempted to disallow rollback after you make a decision but I don't really know how popular that is with the players.

Think of rollback as just a more-convenient quicksave/quickload, since that's basically what it does. If you want to bar people from going back and changing their decisions, then you don't just have to block rollback, you have to block load and save as well. If you don't care about people using load and save to change their decisions, why should you care about rollback?


As a player, I prefer to have the option if I want to use it. If you block it, it'll make your game more frustrating to play, and it'll make me less likely to do so.

No.... it will create bugs if one allows that...

There's no reason rollback should introduce bugs. It doesn't just roll the reading point back to before the decision, it also rolls back the value of any variables which have changed - any bug which is triggered by rollback will also be triggered by saving and loading the game.

[chensterrain]

I personally really dislike games that let you rollback choices, even if it is just an easier quicksave/quickload - depending on whether the outcome of each choice is immediately obvious or not, it pretty much takes away the challenge of making choices entirely (especially if the game's one of those with relationship meters that go up or down after each choice, letting you know immediately whether you've made the right one or not. With rollback it all ends up feeling kind of pointless, but maybe that's just me :/).

I guess with pure VNs where you might not necessarily know the impact of each choice until much later, it isn't so bad, though. :B

[Jake]

it pretty much takes away the challenge of making choices entirely

If you want to disable rollback because you want to give more impact to choice-making, then IMO you should pair it with a single load/save slot so that people can't get around the restriction any other way.

If you leave the option but just make it awkward, then you're not actually affecting the way people will play your game at all, you're just affecting how frustrating they find it.

[curry nochi rice]

No.... it will create bugs if one allows that...

There's no reason rollback should introduce bugs. It doesn't just roll the reading point back to before the decision, it also rolls back the value of any variables which have changed - any bug which is triggered by rollback will also be triggered by saving and loading the game.

Oh... so this means this bug I'm dealing now is related to something else.... thanks you for the lesson.

[papillon]

Also don't forget that rollback has uses other than changing your mind - people do sometimes click (or double-click) by accident and need to back up to see what the choice even was to begin with.

If you want to discourage people from making a choice and then immediately backing up and taking it back, try making the outcome of your choices more interesting and less obviously good/bad. In many branching-path games with multiple endings, people are going to want to get all the endings anyway, so they're going to eventually try all the outcomes of the choices and carry through with them to see where they go.

If outcomes are ONLY good or bad, then players have good reason to back up and steer for the Good choice if they're trying to boost their rep with some character. But if that's the kind of game it is, and they really really want to get that character's ending and there's only one way to do it, should you intentionally throw roadblocks in their path and make them more frustrated? Some games lately even come with pictures of the characters by each choice so you know before making it which option to pick to go for that character. That DOES seem really pointless to me, but that's really down to the way the game is designed...

If there's more than one Good choice and more than one Bad choice and the choices you make really let you role-play your character, and mistakes are recoverable (that is, you can lose some points here but get enough good points later to make up for it), people are more likely to stick with their decisions even if it costs them a few affection points.

Or - if you only reveal affection point changes at the end of a scene which involved multiple choices, rather than after every choice.

[Jake]

Oh... so this means this bug I'm dealing now is related to something else.... thanks you for the lesson.

Veering off into Ren'Py-Support-land, I would advise making sure you're not initalising any of your game-state variables in init blocks, and initialise them all immediately after the start label instead - that's the most likely cause of bugs which appear to be related to rollback and/or save/load.

[chensterrain]

If you want to disable rollback because you want to give more impact to choice-making, then IMO you should pair it with a single load/save slot so that people can't get around the restriction any other way.

If you leave the option but just make it awkward, then you're not actually affecting the way people will play your game at all, you're just affecting how frustrating they find it.

To be fair, I'm only really talking from personal experience here - I guess it doesn't make much sense that choices have far more impact to me even when I know I can just save beforehand, but hey. I'm not saying I want to absolutely lock the player into every choice they make, and I'm totally fine with them getting around the restriction - plus, having a single save slot would probably result in people having to restart the entire game after making a wrong choice, so I definitely wouldn't want to go down that route either... :/ It's complicated, I guess! To be honest, I think I'm pretty much just thinking of games with minigames or dating-sim elements - I wouldn't want to name names, but there are a few ren'py games I've played where you technically only have one shot at each minigame and you're meant to put a lot of thought into your actions, but if you fail you can literally just roll back and have another go, and I lack the self-restraint not to do that every time, unfortunately.

If there's more than one Good choice and more than one Bad choice and the choices you make really let you role-play your character, and mistakes are recoverable (that is, you can lose some points here but get enough good points later to make up for it), people are more likely to stick with their decisions even if it costs them a few affection points.

This is pretty much how I play, too - but if I know all it takes is a page-up to get a couple of points back, I'll probably end up doing it. :3 Chances are, if the game's a dating-sim type game with a billion choices that don't necessarily lead to different branches and only raise or lower relationship values, there's not much need to see every single outcome anyway. Horses for courses, I guess! :B

[gundestiny]

Okay, thanks everyone for the replies.

I'll keep the rollback feature in because if you're not into it, just don't use it I suppose xD
I do realise games can be irritating/frustrating if you can't go back to that choice (especially when you've forgotten to save it beforehand)

Thanks for all your opinions everyone!
Heaps appreciated!!

[Tsuki-chan]

All of the (professionally released) commercial games I've EVER played did not allow rolling back to change a decision. They did, however, allow rolling back to see what decision you made.

With that said, I do not like the option to rollback and change a decision. In my opinion, it takes away from the experience.

[Jake]

All of the (professionally released) commercial games I've EVER played did not allow rolling back to change a decision. They did, however, allow rolling back to see what decision you made.

I would say:

- Firstly, it's not true of all "professionally released commercial games", since I'm pretty sure some of Jack Norton's games allow it at the very least.
- Secondly, it's pretty irrelevant; the question is whether it's a good idea, not whether everyone does it. Regular exercise is a good idea and not everyone does that; drinking alcohol is a bad idea and lots of people do that.




How is it, to your mind, that rolling back takes away from the experience in a way that load/save does not?

[kuroi]

I'm of the opinion that if rollback would eliminate the challenge from decision making in a game, then maybe the decision making in a game is not complex enough. What about putting in several decisions which control the choice of which path you go on and then you take an average from those decisions.

It's just one idea, I'm sure there are tons of ways to make decision making more complex in a game. I think this would add to the enjoyment of the game rather than solving the problem by simply removing a feature.