[DISCUSSION]Is a love meter a good idea?

[CrunchyShadow]

My newest and first project is... you guessed it a love game.

Serious question though. My partner thinks we should implement a love bar. As in progress.
But I argued it kinda makes our game too "tropey"...
So should it be implemented? I want this game to be less a dating-sim more a love story with multiple routes.

What do you guys think?
I really need your advice LSF.

[Rossfellow]

The Love Guage is personally the drawing line between a visual novel and a game. If you want to make your project a game to be solved, why not? Go for it.

[CrunchyShadow]

The Love Guage is personally the drawing line between a visual novel and a game. If you want to make your project a game to be solved, why not? Go for it.

Thank you

[Taleweaver]

This sounds like something you'd want to discuss among creators.

Moved.

[Tempus]

To be blunt, I don't think it's a good idea to represent love on a one-dimensional scale. Once you begin tying stats and progress meters to a character's personality and emotions you have to be careful that it doesn't reduce that character to stats in the player's mind. Otherwise the ostensibly important part (one person's love for another in this case) becomes trivialised because the player is trying to game a system rather than interact with the character in a genuine and meaningful way.

[Laniessa]

Frankly, I dislike love meters because gives the feeling that the player character is manipulating them rather than forging a relationship.

On the other hand, we could say all dating sims are manipulation games. It’s up to you, but I dislike it - I second Tempus’s opinion, here.

[Tempus]

Since my previous post was a bit of a downer, I'll elaborate a bit. Writing (and its related techniques) along with art and audio assets can say things about a game's themes, mood, and so on. This is pretty obvious—writing can speak literally or metaphorically, as can art and audio. Music can be diegetic (i.e., it exists in the game world and the fictional characters can also hear it) or be used to set the mood solely for the player's benefit. Art can be symbolic or straightforward too. These types of communication can of course be used together. Something can be literal and metaphorical simultaneously, for example.

In addition to this is another element. Jonathan Blow calls it the "dynamical meaning" (here's a talk he gave on it—I highly recommend it to anyone interested in game design) and Ian Bogost has a related concept he calls "procedural rhetoric." They both get at similar things: the systems in a game and the player's manner of interacting with them say something about the game and the world. In other words, mechanics and gameplay can be used in ways analogous to writing, art, and audio.

This is what I was getting at with the love meter. The story (presumably) presents a romance between two characters who are supposed to be in a believable relationship. But then a love meter appears and reduces all the complexities of a relationship into a gauge in the corner of the screen. The story tells me one thing (this is a potentially serious relationship) and the "dynamical meaning" another (the relationship can be represented with a one-dimensional gauge).

That's not to say it couldn't work. But I'm very sceptical. Anyway, I do have an example of a character meaningfully tied to stats/progress which I think worked well. In Final Fantasy IV there's an old man called Tellah who joins your party. In most Final Fantasy games character's stats increase as they level up. But since Tellah is an old man his stats actually decrease as he levels up, in contrast to the younger characters becoming more powerful when they level up. Consider these quotes from the Final Fantasy Wikia (since I haven't played FFIV in an age and can't remember everything!):

• "[Tellah] is the Great Sage of Mysidia, and a master of both White and Black Magic, but due to his old age, he can only remember a few of his spells."
  
  "After his wife died, Tellah became overprotective of their daughter, Anna, who eloped with Edward . . . Tellah was furious and pursued them but had grown slow in his old age and lost track of them"
  
  "Tellah tells the Elder of his plans to defeat Golbez using Meteor, but the Elder reminds Tellah . . . that [he] would die if he were to cast Meteor, due to his old age."

All these things are reinforced by his stats decreasing upon level up. Tellah, with his stubborn attitude, is having trouble confronting the reality of his failing body. He fights in battles but can't remember all his spells, he pursues his daughter but becomes lost, and he levels up despite losing stats. Final Fantasy IV isn't a particularly profound game but it does communicate through a multi-pronged approach, including with character stats.

---

Also, I might as well address the fact that I kept saying "game"—it's just quicker to type. It doesn't even come close to mattering to me whether visual novels are games or not, but they share enough commonalities for ideas about one to be usable (or at least useful) for the other.

[E-night]

Right, I'll play the devil's advocate seem this thread seem to need it.

Love meter's (and other kind of relantionships/character meters, really) have more than one function. One of them is the need to express to the player how they are doing, and another is to express to the player which direction the story is going in.

They are both a shackle, a helping hand to the player and a way for the game to communicate information to the player.

They are a shackle because they can force the player to pick an option purely based on that little +/-. I have certainly played game where there was option I felt I couldn't pick purely because I would handicap myself in some what because of a stat. (I've had that with morality stats more than, love meters actually)

But they can also be the only thing that can ease the anixity of the choices. A lot of VN (espically romance) have dialog choices or other small choice which only affect a line of two. The unspoken 'rule' in, espically romance, is that those choices also, properly, affect some hidden stat behind the scene that pushes the player towards ending A or ending B.

Not having the stats transparant can leave the player wondering, what the choices do in terms of mechanics and pull them just as much out of the story as the presence of the meter, simply because they fear to get a bad ending and use more time fretting over the invisible stats as the story.

Basically it boils down to how much you want the player to know, because the game is going to have to measure the relantionship between the PC and the LI somehow and that is likely going to be a love meter (It doesn't have to, but it likely is).

[papillon]

Going along with what E-night said: how much does the player NEED feedback, and how much do they need DETAILED feedback?

In a game where you can pursue multiple characters at the same time, and then at the end, with no further input from the player, you get an ending with the character who has the HIGHEST love ranking, then it may be very useful to the player to see the exact love ranking scores so that they know which ending they're headed for and can make choices accordingly. When a 91% will overrule a 90%, the player cares about that 1%.

In a game where you can pursue multiple characters throughout, but then you can choose any character who has at least X amount of love points, then the player no longer needs to know about the 1% because it doesn't make a difference - what they need to know is whether or not they are in the Love Zone. This sort of game might show you emotional categories, like the smiley faces some dating sims use to give a rough idea of how much someone likes you.

In a game where you pick a single character at the beginning and stick with them, you probably have no use for a detailed breakdown of how each character thinks of you because it's not relevant during gameplay.

Some games force you to pick the 'right' choice every time there's a decision point if you want to get a character's ending. In this situation, a bar isn't really meaningful because the exact percentage of points has no meaning. If even 99% means you failed and only 100% wins, what's the use of a bar? So, some games will give a signal after you pick a choice to tell you whether it was right or wrong, but not involve numbers because the numbers don't matter. (This is often done with a sound effect and a sparkle, or a spray of flower petals).

now whether any of these are good game designs in themselves is a whole other issue, but the point I'm trying to make here is that the kind of feedback a player needs to play a game effectively depends on how the game works.

[SeventhStranger]

I like functions like a love meter if they're incorporated in a more subtle way.
I don't particularly want a bar that fills up that I can look at anytime because I feel it breaks the immersion.

I DO, however, like it when they include clues as to how my response affected the person. Biowares' method of putting "Solas Approves" or "Cullen Disapproves" when I make a choice is useful enough to let me know where I am headed without bringing me completely out of the story. Telltale does something similar but their way seems a little more ambiguous (so-and-so will remember that - what the hell does that even mean? lol)

As Papillion mentioned above me, visual clues can help too - a tiny heart pops up when you make a choice that adds to your love score. A broken heart appears when you've upset them, etc...

[Laniessa]

But can’t you usually tell if it was a good choice or not depending on the LI’s reaction? Typical sad face / angry face for ‘bad’ choices, or silence, with smiles and energetic talking for the ‘right’ choice. That’s how it was in Katawa Shoujo, I think.

I just think indicators could be more subtle. When in Persona 3 Portable, I got one music note for a choice in a social link, I wanted to reload and get the ‘right’ choice, for example, and instantly I’m thinking of the relationships as a game I want to win, instead of consideration for the character.

I’m a bit romantic in this area, I suppose. People won’t really mind numbers and bars though, not even me! It’s just preference.

[trooper6]

papillon has smart things to say.

I will add that gameplay/UI really has an effect on how the player experiences the game. What experience do you want them to have?

Here are two stories.
I played Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and enjoyed it quite a lot. I had a friend I know play the game and almost immediately...in the first town you show up at, there is a little old lady who owns this cool lighthouse. This friend provoked the little old lady into hitting him and then murdered the little old lady so that he could move into her house. I was horrified and asked why he'd do such an evil thing. He replied that he didn't do any evil thing because the game didn't give him +5 Evil Points. When he played Knights of the Old Republic (which does give you +5 Evil Points or +5 Good Points) he always ended up very "Good"--but I realized that was only because there were points to tell him what was good or evil and he liked people to think of him as good. The minute the points were not given...he just went straight to murdering defenseless old women and insisting he was still a good guy. I thought the lack of points was a good thing because it resulted in a more honest play through. And I learned something about him.

Another example. I am a longtime GM of table-top RPGs. When you play a game like D&D where you have lots of HP and the players track their HP, and I tell them exactly how many points of damage they have gotten...I find the players game that. They take risks they wouldn't do in real life because they know exactly how many HP they have left. The minute I track their HP secretly and only describe the effects of the damage...all of a sudden they act very differently. They act a bit more cautiously and don't take crazy risks they wouldn't in real life. I like that atmosphere.

I like a more realistic feeling where you don't know things you wouldn't know in character. I like the sort of uncertainty you have in real life. I don't always know if saying this will make someone like me...and when I say something, I don't always get a point value feedback system. I like some uncertainty coupled with very thorough descriptions of the way the world responds to my actions.

However! Some people don't like uncertainty and that sort of realism. They enjoy gaming point systems. They enjoy manipulating points. They enjoy seeing a +5 Like Point or a -5 Love Point feedback. They like being a bit more powerful. They like having control over people and relationships they don't have in real life. They want a bit of fantasy.

So do you want your game to feed a certain kind of power fantasy in the realm of romance (or combat or whatever) or do you want a more "realistic" feel of your game?

That should be some of the things you think about when pondering your question.

[CrunchyShadow]

Thanks for the feedback everyone:))

[Riverbird]

In this regard, I've always favoured the idea of player choice - having toggle-able meters is always one way to go, and my current project has them work that way.

One recent game I played had a neat feature on it's NewGame+ which even let you toggle on little flags on individual dialogue lines, to show which ending they led to. It was somewhat invasive, but on the third time around, (I'm an inveterate 100% completion seeker,) I confess I found them really useful, especially given some choices were rather arbitrary in who they ended up affecting. (To the point where I'd have missed out on a chunk of content had I not turned them on, there were far to many branches to brute force every route.)

[LPRe]

Not sure if you've already come to a decision, but here's my opinion on it: It really depends on the style of your visual novel and how you want it to feel.

I like love meters and indicators, but they also put me into a specific mindset/idea about what I'm playing -- it's less a novel and more a game, which isn't a bad thing. It helps me keep track of my progression to get a certain character, I tend to remember choices I made previously a little better, and sometimes it makes me feel more connected to it -- 'the choices I make are important, as seen by this handy dandy meter!', kind of thing. Progress flags are nice in games.

That being said, not having a love meter/indicator has benefits too. Without one, I tend to focus more on the things the characters do and say throughout the story, since I don't have the convenience of a love meter telling me if I've done the right thing, and the payout if I pick the 'right' things, so to say, feels better, since I was going in blind. It also can be more immersive, I agree.

I think the best idea would have an 'on-off' feature for a love meter/indicator, because than people could play either way or both and see how their choices work out. It's a good compromise between you and your partner too, imo.