by redle » Thu, 17May11 02:33
I voted for finished once. In these games there are almost always several scenes that I never see but would like to (other than looking through the image folder or some other variant of cheating). For the most part these games very much are an adult comic or visual novel. They are scripted from start to finish with little player autonomy. The player doesn't make the PC who he wants him to be. The PC is explicitly defined as personality A, B, C, or what have you by the first few choices a player makes and then the rest of the game is played out trying to guess which choice matches the predefined personality. If you guess right you get to keep playing, guess wrong too many times and you must start over (or worse, get to keep playing but get all the adult content stripped from your viewing).
There often is one or two points in the story (a date or some such) where the player actually gets open-world. The player gets to choose whether the action takes place at the beach, in a diner, in the mountains, etc. The choice doesn't matter to the plot and is there to add some variety to replay and give the player some content control. I do like having some choices, but at the same time I kind of want to do all of the dates at some point. That said, I do not want to need to earn the right to date all over again (yes, sometimes I like to start from the beginning again and do things differently, but I don't want it to be required). It's kind of like giving a book and saying chapter 5 has been rewritten 3 times. Read them all and see which you like best. Oh, but you must read chapters 1-4 once for every version of chapter 5. Saves are well and good in their own right, but as a solution for things like this put the onus on the player for no good reason.
I like these games. I like the stories. The main thing I dislike about them (or any visual novel type game) is the fact that it ceases to be a game after a few playthroughs and devolves into tracking and clicking every possible combination available to see all the content. As soon as I start choosing options not because it's an option I want to explore, but because it's the next choice sequence yet to be tried, I tend to walk away from the game.
If I were to choose a different option in the poll, other than completing it once, I would choose "from the beginning." It isn't that I want to skip the game. I'll play the game first whether there is a gallery available or not. Once I decide I'm done with exploring/playing, though, I'd like to be able to see what I missed or re-see scenes I want to re-see, regardless of how complete or incomplete my play was. Also, cache/cookie/file cleanup is an all-to-frequent blocker. I don't want things trying to work around my cleanup to make things persistent without me explicitly choosing to create that persistence and I don't want to need to re-earn content viewing because I cleaned up.
In contrary view to most of what I just said, I will admit that sometimes it is nice to see which areas/scenes are still locked to get an idea where to pursue additional play/content. I don't want to just see the scene. I want to be told just enough to know that there is more content waiting to be seen and enough of a hint as to which area within game has said content. This can help alleviate the feel I mentioned before where I'm simply exhausting all possible combinations, but back to making choices with a goal in mind.
The thought I have at the moment would be a gallery that's unlocked easier than harder, but add layers to the unlock process. The first lock is your poll choice: access to the gallery unlocks when player succeeds at accomplishing X (be it simply starting a game, reaching every possible event in the game, or some combination in between). Next, individual events within the gallery are unlocked when a player views them in any playthrough. Lastly, if the gallery is unlocked, but any specific event is locked, a player can click on it and choose to unlock it (with no more hassle than a verification warning or two asking if I'm really sure I want spoil my game play by jumping straight to this content rather than reaching it through due course).