Discussion: Elements in vore games you dislike

[juicefox]

As the thread title suggests, this thread is for the discussion of mechanics and features in vore games that you dislike. I’ll start with two very common mechanics that I, personally, dislike:

Timers in text games:
An example of this is when you are eaten and you have to wait Xmin for the digestion scene to play out.

My problem with timers in text games is that different people read at different speeds. So slow readers are frustrated because text is scrolling past them too quickly for them to read it, and fast readers are frustrated because they have to wait for the game to progress with no way to speed things up.

I understand why a developer might want to put a delay or a limited time window in a game. But you can simulate both these things with counters. If you want a delay, you can just program the next scene to run after the player has performed X number of actions. And, if you want a limited time window, you can make the fail state run if the player does not perform the correct action in X number of turns.

Randomized outcomes:
An example of this would be, if you get caught by a predator, you have a 50% chance of a non-fatal oral vore scene, a 30% chance of a fatal oral vore with fail state, and a 20% chance of fatal anal vore with fail state.

I don’t really understand why developers randomize outcomes, so I’d really like it if someone could explain it to me. To me, it just means that I have to repeat a scene over and over again until I get the outcome I want. It just feels like a mindless grind because my actions have no impact on the outcome: it’s all just a roll of the dice.

Note:
If you are a developer who uses these mechanics or a player who enjoys them, please don’t take offense. These are just my personal preferences. If you have a different opinion, that’s great! I try to keep an open mind, so I would love to hear your reasons for using/liking these elements.

[Gelus]

In my case, the thing I tend to loathe are sudden loss-scenarios. Something where you go to a certain place or do a certain thing and immediately fall into a cutscene where your viewpoint character is forced into a prey position. Considering that I play games for the opportunity to be a predator, it's jarring and unpleasant to suddenly be forced into a role I don't enjoy. It's one thing to lose a battle, or run out of time in a puzzle, it's another for the game to just go "Nope, now this is happening". I guess it's the same kind of frustration as scripted-loss boss battles in rpgs.

[Shortpig]

The lack of maps or guides and the existence of poorly hidden secrets. I'm the kind of person that loves to know how things tick, and would prefer seeing everything in a game displayed in it's entirety. Sometimes I can look at the coding for games from the files available, and sometimes I can't. For those that I can't, creator-created guides are quite a boon to have in lieu of seeing the files themselves. For those with neither... I'm driven crazy, searching every nook and cranny, making certain that I don't miss out on some trigger that unlocks a hidden scene.

Despite how much I love his games, Mysta is probably the worst offender in this. MMA's dragon is off in one corner of the map and caused me to have to replay the entire game since the final boss fight and the good endings are all locked behind whether you spoke to this other character off on the side of the map or not. MMA2's catgirl scene took me a good chunk of time to get up the stairs, and the maid's sprite is literally not on screen and took a fair amount of guesswork and intuition to locate.


In addition to this, it's certainly compounded by the aforementioned RNG aspect. Searching everywhere becomes insufficient, since RNG could cause you to miss out on something. I recall times that I've spoken to a NPC in a vore game dozens of times in the hopes of triggering something, give up, only to come back later and find a scene on accident that RNG had somehow not shown me earlier. I STILL haven't seen all of the lines in Ryanshow's devourment mod, since it's ALL RNG based.


I just feel like things could be a bit better if they were more straight forward and had the option of seeing everything that was available at once - or, at least, there were always some guide on how to find it all.

[juicefox]

In my case, the thing I tend to loathe are sudden loss-scenarios. Something where you go to a certain place or do a certain thing and immediately fall into a cutscene where your viewpoint character is forced into a prey position. Considering that I play games for the opportunity to be a predator, it's jarring and unpleasant to suddenly be forced into a role I don't enjoy. It's one thing to lose a battle, or run out of time in a puzzle, it's another for the game to just go "Nope, now this is happening". I guess it's the same kind of frustration as scripted-loss boss battles in rpgs.

I'm of two minds about this. As someone who exclusively takes the prey's perspective and prefers unwilling vore, I want to get forced into this position without having to behave in a stupid or suicidal manner. But I agree that it is really frustrating to suddenly die with absolutely no warning or any indication that I'm in danger. It feels unfair if I get an instant game over when I so much as speak or even look at a predator just once. Maybe it would be okay if an NPC warns you ahead of time that this character is unpredictable and dangerous, but usually there's no warning at all. So, yeah. This is a complicated issue for me.

[jasamprn]

Insta game overs don't bother me usualy, because I like prey and loads a button away. Would be something to consider if I ever pull together a mixed game.

In vore games, I can't stand overly grindy RPG mechanics. As much as for example, I loved taito's games. the points where you had to stop and grind out max skills to progress got more then a bit dull.

In quest games, waiting on timers to progress gets super dull, as does RNG stuff.

[Lakeless]

Highly similar to the instant game overs in terms of unfairness, I sometimes find it frustrating when I have to fight overpowered enemies in order to progress through a game.

Now, don't get me wrong, I understand completely why enemies may be overpowered in a game where you're the prey and, for the most part, it's exactly what the gameplay needs. However, when you're in a situation where you want to progress to new areas to find new scenes, it can become salt-inducing to suddenly have to get past enemies who are seemingly impossible.

It's a complicated issue since weak enemies = doesn't give the feeling that you're being overpowered and eaten by them. Yet, too strong, and it makes gaming a bit of a chore.

There's no real fix to this issue at all 'nor does it really need one, I guess. It's just how things are. However, sometimes it can become quite tedious.

[BellyOfTheWubblies]

As someone who is making a text game, there are some issues with using turn-based scripts. The only one really worth noting is the 'realism'. A pred wouldn't wait for you to do something most of the time, they'd just digest at their leisure. Plus, you would have to design quite a few interactions and write a few different struggles or people would complain it's too basic.

As for random chance, life is kinda random, so in a lot of cases, it kinda makes sense. I definitely understand that it's super annoying with bad pseudo-RNG from an engine like quest. I wish it had a better system for running RNG, but it's incredibly likely to get a 30% chance roll 12 times in a row in quest. Happens all the time while I'm testing scenes and bugs the shit out of me, but I'd prefer to make it a game than a simple porn-scene gallery where you just go to the area and click to get a scene. If I wanted that, I'd just write scenes and post them individually instead.

[Monopolus]

Lack of direction and no quest log to tell you where you need to go (only for the larger RPG-type games I've seen).

It's frustrating to hear where you're supposed to go by X NPC and then if you forget where to go, there's nothing to help you. The same NPC will say 'good luck!' or something else that doesn't help you get back on track. Then you have to meticulously go about trial-and-error style to figure out what you have to do. This happens especially when you can't play through the game in one sitting and have to come back later.

Also, a more minor thing would be to not include little sparkly icons on objects that indicate interaction.

[Phietto]

Casually going through and making sure I tick every box... Yuuuuuuuuuup
Though a lot of issues inherent to vore text games are mostly issues with the quest engine itself.

Timers are interesting in quest especially, because Quest Online (Which noone should be using ANYWAY) invariably handles timers and scripts rather terribly, since it runs the game off quest's servers and not your computer, then (introducing a whole bunch of latency issues, and why when you click sometimes it sends about thirty responses back). But for some things (ii.e digestion), timers solve the nice neat issue of stopping a giant text dump or otherwise locking people into "insta-loss" scenes, but forcing the player to act or 'struggle' between each set could be a little jarring. That, and the inverse applies. When you're trapped in a stomach and the only thing you can do is struggle, are you really going to click it four times just in case that's what you need to do in order to progress?

Randomised scenes are rather prevalent perhaps due to the fact that it's an easy way to inject extra interactivity and such without turning everything into an arbitrary fetch quest (He says, turning everything into an arbitrary fetch quest :v). Which is half the fun of making a game in the first place - it's a lot more alive and interactive than a bunch of stories strung together. Sure, I could just write 3000 word smut of InsertSceneHere, but that's hardly as fun as having a bunch of snark when you try to initiate it too early, and a bunch of variants depending on other specifics. There are really two alternatives to RNG - Either give the player the choice in every possible scene, or remove the other variants altogether. In the case of the latter, that's less stuff to see! That'd be terrible! For the former, then you end up breaking the fourth wall every time. Do you really want an extra two menus just to decide how you're going to snuggle a cat? That, and like Wubs said, It's not a porn gallery.

Which kinda ties into the whole Walkthrough/Guide. If you want to find everything, you've gotta work for it. (Though if you can't find everything hinting at it within game, then I suppose that's a failure of the game itself in guiding you where you're supposed to go.) I'm terrible for this, mostly because I'll put things in as a random thought and not fully connect it to things, so if you find something hidden, it's probably forgotten, too :v

As for direction and Questlogs, I totally need to make a quest log thing for my game, so thanks for that, expect that next update when I get around to it. Part of it stems for an unwillingness to railroad the player though, where it stops being a game and just becomes "Press ==> to continue"




Things I dislike though:
Inconsistency in Tags/Names etc - c'mon, that's just sloppy writing. Capitalise your place names or not, just pick one and stick to it
That, and in quest, not removing default "look at/take" verbs, for things that can't be taken etc.

[VelenSnowdrop]

I really dislike that most vore games are overly digestion-centric with little to no support for endo

[BellyOfTheWubblies]

I really dislike that most vore games are overly digestion-centric with little to no support for endo

For a game to support endo, it really has to be built specifically for it, like The Showers. In their universe, vore seems like a friendly little thing and you can enjoy scenes, unlocking them by finding codes in the world. They did it really well. Most games, though, are gonna have game overs or have preds that want food, not a buddy to keep around. My game has one character that, if you become friends with, she's all about letting you enter however you want and she refuses to fatally digest you, but that's because it fits her character. Most preds it just doesn't fit, and tbh it doesn't make for the best game content, just sitting in one person, interacting a bit.

[forumlurker]

- In general I hate grinding. It's not hard, just tedious to do. It just drags out the game.


- Status effect spamming. I don't think spamming that will make the game necessarily harder. It just means some characters are on constant potion/restore duty.


- Crafting. In general, I just don't like it. A very personal thing as others seem to love it.

[Psycho_wolvesbane]

As someone who has played pretty much all of the Quest games linked in this forum and is trying to develop one myself (no proof of concept ready yet) I dislike timers when used in conjunction with large paragraphs of text for digestion.

I've gone with a more user wait command approach for the text scenes while my stomach/digest rooms for each pred character plays a more interactive part than most games I've seen as I plan on making it a sort of RPG turn based struggle to escape with proper player vs pred attribute stats with some element of item usage to balance out the whole "preds are much stronger than prey in general" thing. Don't expect to hear any more of this game for a long while yet.

[empatheticapathy]

Voice acting, mary sue preds, pics that are poorly photoshopped to have large bellies, text crawls (especially unskippable ones), exposition dumps, or just plain refusing to stop guiding the player/bossing them around and let them play. On more fetishy grounds: a lack of willing prey, and an excess of anal vore. Though AV gets something of a pass for male preds.
Oh, and in RPG Maker games: loading the game up with fancy scripts and UIs seemingly just to do it.

[juicefox]

As someone who is making a text game, there are some issues with using turn-based scripts. The only one really worth noting is the 'realism'. A pred wouldn't wait for you to do something most of the time, they'd just digest at their leisure. Plus, you would have to design quite a few interactions and write a few different struggles or people would complain it's too basic.

The predator will have to wait for digestion to begin anyway, so there should be plenty of time for the player to act. So you could just allow the player to struggle for a few turns and give a stock responses about how ineffective their efforts are. The turn taking would simulate time passing, and the ineffectiveness of the players actions would emphasize the futility of their position. Admittedly, this is very basic but, as long as you only make players view a few of them, I doubt that would mind very much.

I realize that, on the face of it, time passing by turn taking might not seem as realistic as time passing literally. But I think that time in stories is different to literal time. Time in stories passes when the reader reads and does not pass when they don't. For example, if you are reading a book on your Kindle and have to stop to answer your phone, the pages don't keep turning while you're talking on your phone.

... timers solve the nice neat issue of stopping a giant text dump or otherwise locking people into "insta-loss" scenes, but forcing the player to act or 'struggle' between each set could be a little jarring. That, and the inverse applies. When you're trapped in a stomach and the only thing you can do is struggle, are you really going to click it four times just in case that's what you need to do in order to progress?

Timers certainly do solve the very real problem of text walls, but I still think that counters can solve this problem just as well. For me, acting (ie struggle) feels natural, because it is what I would do anyway. If I were trapped in a room in both a game and real life, I would do everything I can to get out, especially if I were in mortal peril. I would not sit around and wait for things to happen by themselves. In fact, when I get into impending fail states in vore games, I tend to repetitively click on every available option, even when I KNOW that progression is timer based because it feels so natural.

As for random chance, life is kinda random, so in a lot of cases, it kinda makes sense. I definitely understand that it's super annoying with bad pseudo-RNG from an engine like quest. I wish it had a better system for running RNG, but it's incredibly likely to get a 30% chance roll 12 times in a row in quest. Happens all the time while I'm testing scenes and bugs the shit out of me, but I'd prefer to make it a game than a simple porn-scene gallery where you just go to the area and click to get a scene. If I wanted that, I'd just write scenes and post them individually instead.

Randomised scenes are rather prevalent perhaps due to the fact that it's an easy way to inject extra interactivity and such without turning everything into an arbitrary fetch quest (He says, turning everything into an arbitrary fetch quest :v). Which is half the fun of making a game in the first place - it's a lot more alive and interactive than a bunch of stories strung together. Sure, I could just write 3000 word smut of InsertSceneHere, but that's hardly as fun as having a bunch of snark when you try to initiate it too early, and a bunch of variants depending on other specifics. There are really two alternatives to RNG - Either give the player the choice in every possible scene, or remove the other variants altogether. In the case of the latter, that's less stuff to see! That'd be terrible! For the former, then you end up breaking the fourth wall every time. Do you really want an extra two menus just to decide how you're going to snuggle a cat? That, and like Wubs said, It's not a porn gallery.

You two make a good case for random outcomes, and I see now that my suggested solution creates more problems than it solves. After all, when the predator wins, the prey should not have any power over what happens next. But I still hate RNGs. They are just so frustrating to deal with.

[BellyOfTheWubblies]

As someone who has played pretty much all of the Quest games linked in this forum and is trying to develop one myself (no proof of concept ready yet)

Hey, always great to have another developer. Quest is fairly easy to learn, but sometimes an idea is tricky to figure out how you should run the scripts. Feel free to give me a bump sometime if you want any help with scripts and stuff. I've been manually creating stuff like shops, combat and all sorts of things. Can also help you get set up with the convlib for easy conversations.

[juicefox]

As someone who has played pretty much all of the Quest games linked in this forum and is trying to develop one myself (no proof of concept ready yet) I dislike timers when used in conjunction with large paragraphs of text for digestion.

I've gone with a more user wait command approach for the text scenes while my stomach/digest rooms for each pred character plays a more interactive part than most games I've seen as I plan on making it a sort of RPG turn based struggle to escape with proper player vs pred attribute stats with some element of item usage to balance out the whole "preds are much stronger than prey in general" thing. Don't expect to hear any more of this game for a long while yet.

Hey! That sounds really cool. So the stomach scenes are sort of like a battle in a jrpg? Will there game in some way indicate to the player the difficulty of the pred? For example, you look at a pred and the description mentions that they "have the confidence of an experienced pred", or "seem a little uncertain of themselves", etc.

... Can also help you get set up with the convlib for easy conversations.

What's this convlib that you mention? I thought the only way to create a conversation was to manually program them.

[pussylover3]

I believe I had talked about this else where but one thing I hate about vore games is when if you are eaten and you can not escape I mean okay if you're one of those people who don't mind then fine but I am the kind of guy that likes to kiss and tell not kiss and die if you catch my drift especially when games allows to yell at the predator for eating you and you don't handle the situation nicely or calmly and you die

[BellyOfTheWubblies]

What's this convlib that you mention? I thought the only way to create a conversation was to manually program them.

Nah, there's an opensource library coded specifically for handling conversations. It's easy enough to make em yourself, but it's way easier using a psuedovector to handle conversation lists and use simple script calls to hide/show new options. Only problem is it's kinda basic in its priority listings so there are some things you can't do with it.

[juicefox]

Nah, there's an opensource library coded specifically for handling conversations. It's easy enough to make em yourself, but it's way easier using a psuedovector to handle conversation lists and use simple script calls to hide/show new options. Only problem is it's kinda basic in its priority listings so there are some things you can't do with it.

Okay then. If I ever make another vore game, I'll have to look into it. Manually programming a conversation was really tedious, so it would be nice to have a way to speed up the process.