Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

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EternalDream
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Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#1 Post by EternalDream »

Okay, to elaborate my question. Does having many... MANY endings actually encourage replay value or discourage it? (Eh, I don't even know if I used the right vocab here <.<) If there were say, 20 or 30 or another large number of endings, would you guys play through every one of them, or only until you get all the CGs? Of course, this is assuming that one play through is about 2 hours. (But if you played through a certain path, you can skip the parts you read)

Since I know for me, I get super intimidated when seeing 15+ endings and I feel that it would take too long to play through them all ._. So usually for a game with 20+ endings, I would probably only play up to 5 endings at most before never touching the game again. (I usually can get all the CGs by my 2nd or 3rd try) I think that if there were less endings, I probably would've played through each of them... even though some might not have CGs.

I thought of this question while reading teacup's question. I was wondering about this because I wasn't sure if adding too much endings would be a BAD thing. >.<

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#2 Post by papillon »

Does having many... MANY endings actually encourage replay value or discourage it?
Both. Next question?

Players are different! Some people are completionists, some only want to play a game once, some fall anywhere in between! So what's the purpose in asking? :)

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#3 Post by EternalDream »

I thought that was the case ^^;; Okay, how about this, I want to know how people here personally feel about having a lot of endings. (And not generalizing saying how some people might feel about that while others might feel differently) I'm going to change the question to:

How do YOU feel about lots of endings in VNs.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#4 Post by Aleema »

It discourages for me. For one, it tells me that there too many branches in the story, and while having the consequence of your actions play out is important, it will feel like it is harder to get the ending you want. It is also a warning sign for crappy endings: endings that are only different from each other in minor ways, or the ending is portrayed in a hodgepodge style that addresses every little decision you made and isn't very satisfying.

I'm a completionist for smaller games, but for games like Tokimeki Memorial, where every little char you meet has 5 endings but the game itself is 8+ hours long, it's is nowhere near worth it to get obsessive trying to complete those types of games. The game is fine for several rounds, but there is that hole that's left over from the game telling you "you're not done!"

I felt this way recently with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood where they injected the game with too many little goals and objectives that even if you played the game completely, it will still tell you you're half done. kthx.

It is nice to know that there's still stuff left to do in a game if you liked it, though. Just ... I dunno. It becomes a chore after a while.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#5 Post by Snowflower »

If each path provides a different perspective of the story, I am fine with it <3
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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#6 Post by LVUER »

I love many endings, especially if the endings are GOOD. Not only there for the sake of having many endings. Star Ocean have too many endings, I like them. But they are encouraging me too, why? Simple, because I have to play all the game again to get them all (pokemon style). Chrono Trigger on the other hand, encourages me since it have New Game+ feature.

In VN, it's no matter to have many endings, since what we do simply sit back, clicking some choice, and reading. And we have the majestic "skip read text" option ^_^

But you include many ending in your game, be sure to add "Ending List" in your gallery, and play that particular ending just by clicking the list.
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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#7 Post by Lumen_Astrum »

It's according both to the player AND to the endings themselves.

If the endings were given completely unique touches, I'd say go for them. Especially, for example, one ending expresses a happy ending, but leaves one, small mystery , which had been all along the whole story, hanging. On one ending possibly, would reveal an option for the answer.. Which would be a bit unique. Sorry if that seem a bit messy xD

And for the player, if he/she is a perfectionist and want EVERY endng... well, I dunno.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#8 Post by pondrthis »

Discourages. If the "complete" story is spread over too many little arcs, I'll feel like the plot is haphazard and not really worth reading. Of course, if I hear they're all really LONG endings and the game is just absurdly long (ala Clannad or Higurashi), that's a different story.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#9 Post by LVUER »

Many ending doesn't need to mean many arc. I like how our choice could lead to many different consequences/result. Radiant Historia is one such good example. It only feature two story arcs, with so many different endings (most being bad endings due to wrong choice or simply you haven't done something yet).
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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#10 Post by Mirage »

For me personally... yes, it discourages me. The reason being, I'm no longer as free as before (not a student). Lately, I prefer shorter game than longer one. In the past, I can afford to play 20 hours a day non-stop. Nowadays, I only let myself play at most 2 hours a day. So I usually choose something short with less endings.

Also, in the case of VN, I usually feel that I have seen enough of the story just by reading a few endings. In the case of dating sim (Galge/Otome), pursuing 1-2 girls/guys are more than enough for me to get the feel of the game. Unless, getting all endings is necessary to understand the entire story, I usually don't bother looking for them.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#11 Post by luminarious »

I abhor having to re-read parts of the story. Even skipping already-read parts feels somewhat cheap. Consequently, I am not a fan of having many endings that are somewhat similar. The rare exceptions are the games on www.choiceofgames.com, because there are so many choices that I can't even begin to imagine whether there are a couple of endings or more.

I much prefer it if there are a couple of well-written endings, but a lot of dialogue and side stories that you can discover. Planescape: Torment was like that. There were a lot things you had to do each time, but what you did between these was entirely up to you. Plus there was often multiple ways of approaching the matters.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#12 Post by Aetheria »

In my opinion, VNs really don't do well when they're given loads and loads of endings, because they tend to be so linear - in the ones I've played, it's often the case that the endings only change a small part of the story, but you have to choose the right options almost from the beginning to get each one - which means playing from the beginning, many times, without getting very much new content for each playthrough.

I'd actually be fine with a VN that encouraged you to save and reload from a particular spot near the end to see each different ending - that would at least save the tedium of skipping through 90% of the story to see the 10% that changed on each path.

Even better would be having so much branching and alternative content that the path to each ending actually read as a different story, but that takes a ton more work. It really seems easiest just to keep the number of endings down.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#13 Post by Suikama »

I said this in the bad ends thread but I'll repeat it for good measure: How well they affect the story depends on how they are used. If you arbitraily throw in extra endings to 'beef up' your game, it doesn't add anything to the experience of the game, it won't improve people's opinion of the game, and it just wastes people's time as they search for all of the extra endings you put in. Basically you should have a reason for every single one of your endings. If you can't think of a reason why you added a certain ending to a game other than "I wanted more endings", it's a good indication that you don't need that ending.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#14 Post by pondrthis »

Suikama wrote:I said this in the bad ends thread but I'll repeat it for good measure: How well they affect the story depends on how they are used. If you arbitraily throw in extra endings to 'beef up' your game, it doesn't add anything to the experience of the game, it won't improve people's opinion of the game, and it just wastes people's time as they search for all of the extra endings you put in. Basically you should have a reason for every single one of your endings. If you can't think of a reason why you added a certain ending to a game other than "I wanted more endings", it's a good indication that you don't need that ending.

That shouldn't be just "ending". It should be "element". Don't add ANYTHING without a purpose.

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Re: Does Many Endings Encourage or Discourage Players?

#15 Post by Suikama »

Oh yeah I said "Like anything else" in the other thread but forgot to mention it here :V

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