dystopianproject
patreon
May '19 Patron Polls
🕑 Added 2019-05-30 18:12:04 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to another set of patron polls!
This month, we'll be polling on the topic of scene variation for Claire's Quest.
As players should know by now, Claire's Quest is a game with numerous branching options and scene variations, or even scene skips, depending on the type of 'build' you go for, and which of the four attributes you prioritize.
Currently, there is a mix of three approaches to the level design. I'll give examples:
1) SIMPLE (x2 OPTIONS): Claire needs to buy a famous bottle of wine. She goes to a bar where it's sold, but the bartender is charging a very high price. Claire can intimidate him into giving it to her for free (if Defiance is 7 or higher), or seduce him into giving a discount (if Seduction is 5 or higher).
2) VARIED (x4 OPTIONS): Claire needs to buy a famous bottle of wine. She goes to a bar where it's sold, but the bartender is charging a very high price. Claire can intimidate him into giving it to her for free (if Defiance is 7 or higher), or seduce him into giving a discount (if Seduction is 5 or higher), or steal it when he's not looking (if Intrigue is 7 or higher), or impress the bartender with her love of the finer things in life, causing him to give her the bottle in exchange for promising to attend a party he's hosting (if Depravity is 7 or higher).
3) COMPLEX (x4 BRANCHING OPTIONS): Claire needs to buy a famous bottle of wine. She goes to a bar where it's sold, but the bartender is charging a very high price. Claire can...
... intimidate him into giving it to her for free (if Defiance is 7 or higher), but he reports her to the guardsmen who try to arrest her; she can trick the searching guardsman by acting innocent (if Seduction is 5 or higher), fight them off successfully (is Defiance is 14 or higher), or get arrested and thrown in jail (100 silvers for bail, or make an escape attempt if you have a lockpick and Intrigue of 5 or higher)
... seduce him into giving a discount (if Seduction is 5 or higher); if she passes the Seduction check, she can give him a quickie to have him give it to her for free (if Depravity is 7 or higher) rather than pay the discounted price.
... steal it when he's not looking (if Intrigue is 7 or higher); if the attempt is made without sufficient Intrigue, the guardsmen are alerted, and try to arrest her; she can trick the searching guardsman by acting innocent (if Seduction is 5 or higher), fight them off successfully (is Defiance is 14 or higher), or get arrested and thrown in jail (100 silvers for bail, or make an escape attempt if you have a lockpick and Intrigue of 5 or higher)
... or impress the bartender with her love of the finer things in life, causing him to promise her the bottle in exchange for attending a party he's hosting (if Depravity is 7 or higher). At the party, Claire realizes an orgy is about to occur, and either joins in automatically and happily (if Depravity is 10 or higher), or tries to run away and ends up imprisoned and toyed with at whim, with the bottle discarded on her person at the end of her ordeal; or, she fights back against her captors and butchers them (if Defiance is 14 or higher), and takes the bottle off their corpses.
While complex quests are always fun to design, keep in mind no matter how complex the quest is, there can only be one or two CG sets assigned to it, as due to the branching nature of the quests, there is a high chance of missing out on certain scenes depending on routes you take, which is counterproductive at times. It also means the more less-varied quests there are, the more scenes you can 'collect' across the game, at the cost of less gameplay and replay value.
These polls are to gauge your preferences, so please, vote away!
Comments
Sergey
Varied is good, but I like when quests are complex in regard that they are intertwined with other quests, not each one being its separate story, but series of quests being parts of it or adding depth to it.
Narf
Yea but they should be used properly: In this example Depravity should lead to said "party" and her gettin laid, instead of just pretending and promising
GeekBone
Truth
DoctorDeath
Normally I'd say 'complex quests', but this isn't The Witcher; 'varied quests' would be much more doable and fitting for a game like this.
Zaths
I prefer that all of the stats come into play given the choice. I'll go for Varied.
lollerskates
I am a simple man. If Claire has a slutty option I will probably take it.
SurlyPanda
Complexity and appropriate reaction give the illusion of life in a game. In RPG too often the response is too simplistic or the NPC just do not reactive giving me the feeling that I am the only intelligent life in a planet which really kills the interest for me.
Adm Trd Ferg
Try copying Summertime Saga. That's how you do porno quests
hweirdo
From my perspective as a guide/walkthrough writer, the fewer branching options the easier it is for me to explain how to approach quests. The longer and more complex they become, the harder it is to keep everything clear. So I personally prefer varied options, as those are those easiest to show that the game has depth without being forced to show the nuance of every single path. Besides, if these are side quests and they have few CGs, they should not overshadow the main storyline and how it can branch.
Mors
well it would add to replayability, i rocked a defiance and depravity run, and then i can go back to see what happens with seduction.
face oupile
If complex is the best in terms of story telling and giving you a real big choice on how Claire is reacting, the fact that you're limited with 2 CG a month could become frustrating. Because either you go that way and you know that you won't have the pictures to back the story (or worst, you'll get them a few month afterwards and I'm not even sure it will be the case since you'll get more "complex choices" every month... and you CG backlog is going wild) Or you decide it will be like that... most of the story will be CG less, except for the favourites of the backers. The best would be to have at least 4 CG each time... but it's limitating so much the story telling... not an easy choice here... I personnaly prefer a rich story telling with the capacity to see or replay some branches afterwards (to be sure I won't miss anything) But as the main story isn't finished, I would prefer to have CG related to the quests that you release (no CG afterwards)
GeekBone
I think you almost have to go with the second option. Otherwise, what is the point of having all the stats if you are not going to use them.
A mix of the quest styles are fine. Some quests should be complex. Others should be simple. It all depends on the concept and to what degree it justifies more detail/involvement.
All depends on the game imo. If this was a poll for Overgrown (or its future titles maybe), I'd pick COMPLEX as my preference, since it's a pretty narrow track you're on but it all builds up to a ton of different results by the end. But yeah, for Claire's Quest I'd prefer them for only the most important quests (gaining access to another island, the endgame of the island faction quests, finding out what happened to mom). And SIMPLE quests can be neat too here and there, to be sure, but do nothing other than them and you wind up with a huge, but shallow, puddle. The meat and bones of what's entertained me has always been the VARIED ones, not to mention it's also prudent to be able to specialize in any of the stats and be able to do a solid majority of the quests in the game, so...picked that! Put in too many SIMPLE quests, and it can start to feel like some stats just lock you out of scenes too much (needing to use the seduce stat on the dock guy to even start the Shieldmaiden quest and no other way is easily the most egregious example of this). And as you noted yourself, too many COMPLEX ones and there's a lot more chance to miss out on scenes simply by picking another path.
