A suggestion for the romances you're considering (if any)

[MReed]

What do I do? Hmmm.

 

1. A class.

2. One race or some interesting sub race.

3. An arena or some underground illegal fights that a player char can participate. In capital or smaller city or cities.

4. Maybe some art assets that can be used in many areas to make them better.

5. A crafting system.

6. More choices and consequences.

7. An entire faction. It maybe small, but as long as it is interestint it's not important.

8. More endings.

 

A fair answer (although 1, 2 and 5 definitely wouldn't fit into the budget left over by cutting a romance -- these are all "programmer heavy" jobs, and romances aren't). My list would be:

 

1. Adding a companion side-quest.

2. Adding more interjections from companions during quest dialog (especially critical path, but also on side quests).

3. Adding dialog / arcs that change the personality of a companion (e.g. corruption / redemption)

4. Modifying existing quests to offer more choices (e.g. alternative resolution paths, "evil" choices)

5. Modifying existing dialog to take into account character "features" (e.g. attributes, skill / feats / perks, spells).

5. Adding additional companions

6, Adding additional quests

7. Adding additional areas

8. Adding additional abilities (spells, "feats / perks", etc.)

 

Generally speaking, I would prefer to add more content to companions (making them as unique and critical to the game as possible) rather than anything else. I suspect that many of the people advocating for romances feel the same way -- its just that "Romance" has become the default way to express this desire.

[Vin]

The supply of stupid arguments like this seems endless.

Do you play cRPGs to compensate for your lack of killings in real life? Or the lack of looting the houses of strangers?

 

You know what...you're right. I hope to someday buy a chess set which comes with options for romance.

 

 

And here I thought I was the only one.

See, usually I have to make up the romances as I go along.

But if I could buy a chess set that would do it for me...

[Grimlorn]

Are you saying that A) There has been a videogame which has properly touched on this subject and B) that videogames are even a slightly decent medium to handle these topics? See, that's the problem. Love just seems too weighty a concept for these scenarios. It always comes off as trite:

 

PC: I like you want to kiss?

NPC: I want to know you better.

PC: Hey, tell me a story!

NPC: Story.

PC: Now a kiss?

NPC: Ok, I love you now!

 

(right-click = touch butt, left-click = touch crotch)

 

Okay, story time. When I was playing through Dragon Age, my then girlfriend, who has no interest in games generally, started to watch me play. She thought combat was boring, and usually just read books while I was doing that, but she liked it when I was talking to the NPCs. And she especially liked watching me hit on Morrigan. And she got really really interested when Leliana showed up and I decided to hit on her, too. She started out loving Morrigan and hating Leliana, but slowly switched positions over the course of the game. In fact, she took kind of a sadistic glee in seeing how screwed up Morrigan was emotionally. The Dark Ritual thing completely knocked her on her ass, because by that point she was invested enough in my character that she didn't want him to die, but thought that Morrigan toxic and didn't want my Warden sleeping with her. Once we got to the epilogue, she was relieved to see that Morrigan actually took the evil god baby and left, since she was afraid Morrigan would turn into a crazy stalker and murder Leliana's weird little rabbit thing and turn it into a pair of shoes.

 

So yes, I think that the romance in Dragon Age was well done. My girlfriend didn't care about video games before or after Dragon Age, but she found the romances compelling enough that she formed attachments to the various characters involved and became invested in the story. If it were just fan service, or if it were poorly written, I don't think that would have happened.

 

And just to mine all of the controversial territory I can with this post, the exact same thing happened with one of my friends who played Dragon Age who happened to be a gay man. He was playing, his non-gamer boyfriend started watching him, and both got totally caught up in the Alistair romance. I was hearing about how they both had crushes on Alistair for weeks after they stopped playing.

Y People who do not like RPGs start enjoying them due to added features that do not directly have anything to do with core RPG mechanics and them demanding the same in all other game shifting definitions in the process is what brought us the last ten or so years of ****. I am look at the latest IGN trolling attempt Top 100 RPGs article.

haha yeah. Final Fantasy 6 best RPG EVAR IN THE WHOLE WORLD.

[el pinko grande]

You know what...you're right. I hope to someday buy a chess set which comes with options for romance.

 

Presumably you'll find one of those when you buy a chess set that comes with a decent story.

 

Okay, story time. When I was playing through Dragon Age

 

Sorry, you lost me.

 

Yeah, knee-jerk Bioware hate is what all the cool kids are doing nowadays, isn't it?

[Grimlorn]

I suspect that many of the people advocating for romances feel the same way -- its just that "Romance" has become the default way to express this desire.

No, romance is not the default way to express desire for unique companions with more dialogue/backstory. That's ridiculous.

Have you read the romance threads? They're very specific about the types of relationships they want with these characters.

[BobbinThreadbare]

And there's the rub re: Videogame Romances

It's frivolous filler meant to satisfy some juvenile urge and that is all. It doesn't help make the game any better or deeper or realisic or IMMERSIVE. It simply makes the lonely person playing the game who says "I want kiss my graphic sprites" the beautiful and overwhelming sensation of companionship that can only be had from a few clumsily-written lines of game-text coupled with tiny graphic icons. Awesome.

 

 

See, I actually believe the opposite. I think those who are steadfastly opposed to romances in video games are likely to be the lonely ones IRL. Since relationships aren't a regular part of their lives, they have trouble viewing their inclusion in video games as anything other than masturbatory pandering. OTOH, if you are habitually in relationships, it seems weird that your character isn't in one. I mean, in most games, you're playing a world-shaking hero who is awesomely competent and probably quite rich from all those sweet monsters loots- why the hell wouldn't such a person have a girlfriend/boyfriend?

 

Girlfriend/boyfriend or sex toy? Becuse most "romance" options in video games amounts to the latter.

 

Also, your character will have a relationship in the true meaning of the word with all the other NPCs. Why does he/she *have* to have sex with someone travelling with him/her?

 

I hope all the recruitable NPCs are grosteque and wierd looking.

[l3loodangel]

A fair answer (although 1, 2 and 5 definitely wouldn't fit into the budget left over by cutting a romance -- these are all "programmer heavy" jobs, and romances aren't). My list would be:

 

Dude that's a 100 K budget and it will all go for one thing. Why is 100K not enough for class or a sub race?

[Jiraboas]

...

 

Yeah its rediculous that people starts fooling around if they dont have any arguments left

 

kind regards,

 

Jira

Edited September 19, 2012 by Jiraboas

[Grimlorn]

And there's the rub re: Videogame Romances

It's frivolous filler meant to satisfy some juvenile urge and that is all. It doesn't help make the game any better or deeper or realisic or IMMERSIVE. It simply makes the lonely person playing the game who says "I want kiss my graphic sprites" the beautiful and overwhelming sensation of companionship that can only be had from a few clumsily-written lines of game-text coupled with tiny graphic icons. Awesome.

 

 

See, I actually believe the opposite. I think those who are steadfastly opposed to romances in video games are likely to be the lonely ones IRL. Since relationships aren't a regular part of their lives, they have trouble viewing their inclusion in video games as anything other than masturbatory pandering. OTOH, if you are habitually in relationships, it seems weird that your character isn't in one. I mean, in most games, you're playing a world-shaking hero who is awesomely competent and probably quite rich from all those sweet monsters loots- why the hell wouldn't such a person have a girlfriend/boyfriend?

 

Girlfriend/boyfriend or sex toy? Becuse most "romance" options in video games amounts to the latter.

 

Also, your character will have a relationship in the true meaning of the word with all the other NPCs. Why does he/she *have* to have sex with someone travelling with him/her?

 

I hope all the recruitable NPCs are grosteque and wierd looking.

Because they can't get "emotionally engaged" if women/men aren't falling all over them and having sex with their character that they wish they were.

[evdk]

You know what...you're right. I hope to someday buy a chess set which comes with options for romance.

 

Presumably you'll find one of those when you buy a chess set that comes with a decent story.

 

Okay, story time. When I was playing through Dragon Age

 

Sorry, you lost me.

 

Yeah, knee-jerk Bioware hate is what all the cool kids are doing nowadays, isn't it?

 

Son, we've been hating on Biowarefor the last 10 years, before it was cool. We are the hipsters of hate.

[Grimlorn]

...

 

Yeah its rediculous that people starts fooling around if they dont have any arguments left

 

kind regards,

 

Jira

English not good. Words no sense. Arguments no sense. Sound like caveman.

[qloher]

Are you super serious? No one here is talking about hack and slash games. You like your characters and plot deep? Are they deep if there aren't romances because that's what you're implying with your post. That there needs to be romance otherwise characters can't be deep.

I am super serious. Hack and slash from my part was an example of a sub-genre that is considered to be an RPG, but is ultimately all about killing things, collecting loot and leveling, not about actual role play. I treat any other sub-genre that may be not as action centered, yet still too killing things centered, the same. Not as a proper role-playing game. Not for me. Planescape was a proper role-playing game in my book and it is possible to complete it only engaging into battle like three times for the entire game if you want to. Because it is character/dialogue/story centered as opposed to battle centered.

It is true it is possible to create a deep proper RPG plot without romance options for the player character, to strip the whole game world of romance would be much harder, but possible I think if you strive enough. Still romance can enhance the immersion greatly if it is proper an done right.

[KenThomas]

 

As for the rest of it, nobody is saying they're necessary for a story to be good.

 

That's true. They're not.

 

Just because something can be done a certain way doesn't mean it should be. Agreeing it's possible to make a good storyline without including romance shouldn't be twisted around and presented as proof that storys are better off without romance.

[Jiraboas]

English not good. Words no sense. Arguments no sense. Sound like caveman.

 

You broke my little heart, tough guy

 

...

 

 

...

 

 

 

How about talking in my language? You will WISH to sound like a caveman :D

 

 

Serious: I try hard and do my best to write as good as I could. Sorry for failing at this...

Edited September 19, 2012 by Jiraboas

[MReed]

Dude that's a 100 K budget and it will all go for one thing. Why is 100K not enough for class or a sub race?

 

Because most of that 100K budget is for writing resources (85k in the example given, but the number made up anyway ). If you wanted a non-playable race then perhaps you could get that in place of a romance, but the writers aren't going to be able to implement a playable race -- that takes a programer, and (depending on how unique you want the race to be) a fair amount of time on their part. Now, obviously you could fire a writer and replace him/her with a programmer, but that's a rather extreme option, don't you think? Project staff (and ratios of programmers to writers to artists to VO talent and so forth) are generally set in stone very early in the project lifecycle. We might be early enough in the project lifecycle that there is some flexibility with these decisions, especially given that oblivion has several projects underway, so instead of firing a writer you might be able to reassign him to another project. But even then, project managers generally don't like to reallocate talent on the fly if they can avoid it, as you have to deal with ramp-up time / ramp-down time each time you do so.

 

So, dropping a romance would get you lots of dialog / lore / similar material, but it isn't going to get you very much in the way of new artwork or new features (feats / spells / races / classes / etc.), simply because the resource mix is wrong. The same goes the other way -- dropping a class wouldn't free up enough resources to enable the addition of a romance.

[TwinkieGorilla]

Yeah its rediculous that people starts fooling around if they dont have any arguments left

 

I'm not fooling around. I'm not going to spend any time reading some lame anecdote which attempts to combat my argument by using the very thing I'm arguing against. I also don't really feel like personally insulting homeboy or his girlfriend. Besides, evdk responded well enough to that post already.

[l3loodangel]

Just because something can be done a certain way doesn't mean it should be. Agreeing it's possible to make a good storyline without including romance shouldn't be twisted around and presented as proof that storys are better off without romance.

 

Dude nobody is agreeing with this ****. There were plenty of good RPG's absent of romances.

[Jiraboas]

I'm not fooling around. I'm not going to spend any time reading some lame anecdote which attempts to combat my argument by using the very thing I'm arguing against. I also don't really feel like personally insulting homeboy or his girlfriend. Besides, evdk responded well enough to that post already.

 

I see your point, but i think its not fair to act as you do in this case. Just my opinion...

 

 

kind regards,

 

Jira

[Rose]

This on the other hand is harmful, just because it breaks immersion by taking what would be a fully developed NPC and turning them into a token.

 

How is a fully developed bisexual character token while an otherwise identical fully developed homosexual or heterosexual character not?

 

For you guys to get these complex relationships where relationships are difficult to build and there are fights with your love interest, you'd have to build the game around the romance and forget about building an actual RPG. Don't you guys realize that when you ask for these "complex" relationships? The game would cease to be a RPG.

 

You do understand that the RP in RPG stands for "role-playing", right? A relationship simulator is an RPG, a fantasy combat simulator is not. I prefer RPGs that take place in fantasy worlds and feature combat as a major part of the game, just as I prefer fantasy novels with a strong plot as well as well developed characters over both Mills & Boon or mindless action.

 

One, I'd like that the orientation of the LI is their own and doesn't change based on the sex of the PC.

 

Absolutely. As long as that orientation is bi for all romancable characters, irrespective of the sex of the PC Well, actually I don't mind either way, they can be bi or switch orientation, whatever the devs prefer.

 

 

But I seriously agree with everything else in your post.

 

I'm just curious... why is it that you love interests need to all be bi or switch? Are you looking at it from a developer's point of view, where it would be a bit of a pain to have to write a bunch of different romances, or do you think it's more fair that the same NPC is available for people playing whatever gender? I look at it as though each NPC should be distinct, and making them all bi or switch based off PC gender robs them a bit of that. Some of them could be heterosexual, some of them homosexual, and some of them genuinely bisexual in a way that's written into their character to be so. Sexuality can often be a large part of someone's personality, and I think to make them change according to the PC makes it harder for the NPC to be their own unique character. I feel it could be potentially interesting to see someone play a homosexual PC that tries to hit on a hetero NPC and get rebuffed. Or maybe it could be part of the explored themes somewhere to see how NPCs deal with either accepting or being uncomfortable with the orientations of other party members, if they intend to take the game in a philosophical direction. Although that would probably be too, I don't know... modern a concern, I suppose, for the setting of this game.

 

 

But I'm rambling a bit. I'd still like to know, why do you think they need to be bi or switchable?

[TwinkieGorilla]

I see your point, but i think its not fair to act as you do in this case. Just my opinion...

 

Yeah, well...that's life.

[duskwind]

People who do not like RPGs start enjoying them due to added features that do not directly have anything to do with core RPG mechanics

 

Mechanics are core to war-gaming, not role-playing. In RPGs, they're merely a useful tool for helping to manage some situations. It's possible to roleplay with no rules at all (the GM decides how uncertain events play out).

[kenup]

I mean what are these people compensating for? Lack of love in life? Lack of friends?

The supply of stupid arguments like this seems endless.

Do you play cRPGs to compensate for your lack of killings in real life? Or the lack of looting the houses of strangers?

Yes I am compensating for the lack of adventure in my life and exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and boldly going where no man has gone before.

 

So if that's true then the pro-romance crowd is compensating for a lack of relationships and romances in their lives. Sounds sad. I feel sorry for you guys.

 

So you would want to start looting every crate you come across in, just so you could trade the items for that one replica sword? But you only use the sword to mindlessly kill bandits and monsters(ooooohhhh MONSTERS!), and not actually have a reason to use it, say protect your loved ones?

 

And don't feel sorry for anyone, or make any assumptions for them. They probably enjoy their lives more than you think.

 

People want romances as part of a whole. There is this thing called immersion and suspension of disbelief. They do not want to just be spawned in a dungeon full of monsters and slaughter their way to the final boss without reason. People like story and characters, dialogue and text, lore and exposition. You seem like you would prefer Oblivion and Skyrim over PS:T or BG.

 

I personally won't have a problem if they are exluded, but when done well in any kind of story, game or otherwise, they can bring some really well done drama or well deserved joy when things go right for the heroes.

[KenThomas]

I agreed that the definition of RPG is fuzzy-- I was just trying to get at your definition of what the key elements of an RPG are. That would help make the debate more meaningful...

 

Try looking at it this way: For the sake of argument, lets say that implementing one romance costs $100k, and that breaks down to 85% to the "writing" budget (dialog creation and related scripting, voice over work, etc.), 14 % testing (making sure the scripts work, etc.), and 1% as Other. Other includes monster / equipment / area design ("art"), unique programming, and so forth.

 

If you were in charge, what would you spend that $100k on as opposed to romances? Keep in mind that resources aren't "fungible" -- for example, "I'd like several new areas" isn't a valid answer, because that would require lots of "art" resources and not much in the way of "writing" resources. Cutting a romance might get you a quarter of a new area, for example, and still leave you with idle writing resources that aren't doing anything. Adding three new quests, though, might work -- if no new areas / equipment / monsters were part of the new quests.

 

This example looks like a strawman setup. I think its a pretty safe assumption that if they believe something will add to the game, they'll put in the work. The previously quoted examples from the devs had to do with whether or not romance affect the quality of the end product, not how much it will add in terms of cost. They add in tons of content into these games in all areas. I don't think the work involved is the true issue and I don't find it believeable that the "time" spent making romances will end up meaning that some other important area of the game doesnt get done.

[evdk]

People who do not like RPGs start enjoying them due to added features that do not directly have anything to do with core RPG mechanics

 

Mechanics are core to war-gaming, not role-playing. In RPGs, they're merely a useful tool for helping to manage some situations. It's possible to roleplay with no rules at all (the GM decides how uncertain events play out).

Computer RPGs are a genre of computer games. They have mechanics. PnP is not the same thing. PLEASE.

Edited September 19, 2012 by evdk

[qloher]

You know what...you're right. I hope to someday buy a chess set which comes with options for romance.

That's where you are loosing me. Chess = tactics = combat. Not a role play.

Edited September 19, 2012 by qloher