Discussion: Elements in vore games you dislike

[empatheticapathy]

To be crass: You're gonna close it after you finish jacking off anyway, so they tie into each other neatly there :v

That falls apart when you die in a vore scene that you don't find arousing enough to finish to, or arousing at all. Of if you were actually trying to get through it.

[ryanshowseason3]

I STILL haven't seen all of the lines in Ryanshow's devourment mod, since it's ALL RNG based.

Blame skyrim not me.

The only way to add multiple scenes to it was to randomize them. It's ingrained in the system because it's meant for:

"Hello"
"Hi"
"Good day"
"Don't you look lovely."

Never meant for my shenanigans. (Comparatively long interactions)

But yeah it makes testing a bitch too. If you haven't seen them all imagine testing to make sure they all actually fire, then following all the branching paths on each... Yah. I've tested production code less at my job.

Might be able to script it away, but the entire skyrim modding engine is an ordeal of frustration. And it defeats the kind of spirit of talking to a random stranger and not knowing if they are going to be friendly or not. *shrug*

[linthia]

I STILL haven't seen all of the lines in Ryanshow's devourment mod, since it's ALL RNG based.

Blame skyrim not me.

The only way to add multiple scenes to it was to randomize them. It's ingrained in the system because it's meant for:

"Hello"
"Hi"
"Good day"
"Don't you look lovely."

Never meant for my shenanigans. (Comparatively long interactions)

But yeah it makes testing a bitch too. If you haven't seen them all imagine testing to make sure they all actually fire, then following all the branching paths on each... Yah. I've tested production code less at my job.

Might be able to script it away, but the entire skyrim modding engine is an ordeal of frustration. And it defeats the kind of spirit of talking to a random stranger and not knowing if they are going to be friendly or not. *shrug*

I can only agree with this ^^ It's almost impossible to have good lines or scenario for vore in a Skyrim mod like a vore mod, some modders succeed to with some quests mods, but the work on it is REALLY fastidious, and it would need to be randomized as ryanshow said, what is even more difficult compared to a quest mod... And in a country like Skyrim, if you vore someone excepted if you're a noble, I think it would be some bandits, so no need for lines

[vmac]

But yeah it makes testing a bitch too. If you haven't seen them all imagine testing to make sure they all actually fire, then following all the branching paths on each... Yah. I've tested production code less at my job.

Might be able to script it away, but the entire skyrim modding engine is an ordeal of frustration. And it defeats the kind of spirit of talking to a random stranger and not knowing if they are going to be friendly or not. *shrug*

So, friendly lurker here,I've done extensive "testing" on your mod and really the only consistent bug I found is the Alchemist won't re-swallow you after she teases you with a double dosage. It's not really a big deal though

[b12481632]

Timers in text:
Possible solution is to let the user read the important text first, then start the timer after they press continue. Prompts during a timed event should not be text heavy. Break it up or pause the timer. Give some indication that the clock's running.

Random events:
Get clever with interactions. Tie the results to the player's response to nearby objects or NPCs. It should ideally be referenced (outright or subtly) in the scene so the player knows something different will happen otherwise.
"A picture of a butt is on the wall. This is nice (y/n)? Stare at it?" -> "Eww... no." -> AV flag is not set.
"Raid the fridge?" -> "You stole their food and left the fridge wide open for kicks." -> OV flag set; psychological urge for player to try interacting again -> "Put the food back where you found it?" -> OV flag unset.

Game over scene versus progress:
Don't add permanent missables. Make it easy to go back later and retry after a success, so the player isn't punished for getting it right on the first try. If necessary, this can be done in an arena or in a dream. Failing that, you might settle for just an unlockable gallery with the losing scene.

[mZmm]

gallery?

[Indighost]

I disagree. The reason why LucasArts eliminated player death in their games was because they realized that constant saving and reloading was neither challenging nor fun, and their games are considered some of the best adventure games of all time.

I counter-disagree! The reason why I played the game Path of Exile for 3 years (stopped 3 months ago) was because you can die and lose 100% of your saved progress instantly, and it was such an incredibly challenge (for me at least) to get to level 95 with maxed-out items and NEVER die. The potential for terrifying instant and total erasure of MONTHS of progress was so exciting! And once I achieved the goal it felt great. I plan to include this in my ongoing game project for this reason.

However, unwilling fatal vore games from a prey's perspective are complicated. Because, although it is mechanically frustrating, I think players who enjoy this kind of vore WANT some kind of permanent consequence for digestion, and game overs are the simplest way to simulate this. That is what makes this subject so interesting to me. It's a conflict between mechanics and content that can be tackled in many ways and has no definitive answer.

I have a friend who suggested that, for prey players, maybe it could lead to a struggle scene where the player has to solve some mini-game in order to get thrown up or escape the stomach before digestion. I think that could be a fun and reasonably low-programming-effort way to handle it. Alternatively, after being eaten/digested, the player could "regain consciousness in a pile of poo" somewhere, however, missing a random item or two, so that's a bit of a punishment. And then if you just die normally you'd have your savegame deleted as normal. I think I might do that, depends how hard to code it ends up being.

Don't add permanent missables.

Good point. I may think I'm being coy about a certain "secret" but really it's just throwing away content if nobody sees it or if they see it once and can't see it again. I'll keep this in mind

[juicefox]

I disagree. The reason why LucasArts eliminated player death in their games was because they realized that constant saving and reloading was neither challenging nor fun, and their games are considered some of the best adventure games of all time.

I counter-disagree! The reason why I played the game Path of Exile for 3 years (stopped 3 months ago) was because you can die and lose 100% of your saved progress instantly, and it was such an incredibly challenge (for me at least) to get to level 95 with maxed-out items and NEVER die. The potential for terrifying instant and total erasure of MONTHS of progress was so exciting! And once I achieved the goal it felt great. I plan to include this in my ongoing game project for this reason.

My point was specific to adventure games, which are very different to RPGs. In most games, player death does makes them more challenging because the game tests not only the players understanding of the game mechanics but also the player's performance. You might know the optimal strategy to defeat a boss in Dark Souls (using this example because I've never played Path of Exile) but, if you do not perform this strategy well, you will die. Whereas, in adventure games (a genre with VERY simple mechanics), once you know where a scripted death sequence is, you can avoid it 100% of the time with no possibility of failure. Sure, you will have to fall into these traps first before you know how to avoid them, but that's all a matter of trial and error, which doesn't really test any skill other than patience. However, I will concede that, in some adventure games, fail states, when implemented well, do add excitement to the game (the Ace Attorney series is a very good example of this). But I'm not saying that fail states are universally bad. I'm was just saying that you shouldn't just assume that they are equally effective in all games in all genres.

[juicefox]

I disagree. The reason why LucasArts eliminated player death in their games was because they realized that constant saving and reloading was neither challenging nor fun, and their games are considered some of the best adventure games of all time.

I counter-disagree! The reason why I played the game Path of Exile for 3 years (stopped 3 months ago) was because you can die and lose 100% of your saved progress instantly, and it was such an incredibly challenge (for me at least) to get to level 95 with maxed-out items and NEVER die. The potential for terrifying instant and total erasure of MONTHS of progress was so exciting! And once I achieved the goal it felt great. I plan to include this in my ongoing game project for this reason.

My point was specific to adventure games, which are very different to RPGs. In most games, player death does makes them more challenging because the game tests not only the players understanding of the game mechanics but also the player's performance. You might know the optimal strategy to defeat a boss in Dark Souls (using this example because I've never played Path of Exile) but, if you do not perform this strategy well, you will die. Whereas, in adventure games (a genre with VERY simple mechanics), once you know where a scripted death sequence is, you can avoid it 100% of the time with no possibility of failure. Sure, you will have to fall into these traps first before you know how to avoid them, but that's all a matter of trial and error, which doesn't really test any skill other than patience. However, I will concede that, in some adventure games, fail states, when implemented well, do add excitement to the game (the Ace Attorney series is a very good example of this). But I'm not saying that fail states are universally bad. I'm was just saying that you shouldn't just assume that they are equally effective in all games in all genres.

PS: I should also mention that a lot of what I have said doesn't apply to prey based games because, since the goal of the player is to see as much vore as possible, the fail states are really win states. These games are more like visual novels/dating sims than adventure games. Because the object of the game is not completion, but rather to unlock as many endings as possible.

[Indighost]

All good points. Thanks for responding.

Also not sure i mentioned it, but this thread has really inspired me to work on my vore game. Thanks for calling for higher standards Juicefox

[Psycho_wolvesbane]

What sort of elements in a text game would be good for a dungeon crawler type game? Room puzzles and hidden treasures/traps?

[eleventh]

Doesn't look like anyone mentioned this yet, but it bugs me when saving is restricted, especially when there are longer timers, pure RNG, and especially with unpredictable game overs.
Although a sizable part of that may be those three things being present at all.

[jason7657]

My biggest dislike in vore games has got to be how in the RPG maker games how if theirs a moving npc, at some point you are gonna have to sit there, and wait for them to move out of the way you want to go, or enter and leave till they are out of the way. Early on in Nyan Adventures, in the hell area, if I did the arena, about half the time I spawned and got insta grabbed by the demons. Luckily, she fixed that later, but it was annoying as hell.

[fieldmousse]

I find it annoying when winning means not getting eaten and you lose if you are eaten
Sure it makes sense from a traditional game design standpoint, but I'm playing a vore game I am going to want to watch those animations XD

Platformers are the most guilty of this

[ForgottenOne]

My biggest dislike in vore games, but I understand for some its preference is gender bias. It really bothers me when its the same gender being preds through an entire game without any variety or budging. Herms don't bother me, but F/F and the like do. I think I feel this way since its really over-saturated when (This is purely just a wild assessment) 90% of vore games are like that.

[MirceaKitsune]

Some observations bring me to yet another element in nearly all vore games, which I missed last time but does often prove to be an annoyance.

I'm not sure how many people will agree with me here, but personally I'm starting to hate vore scenes that cannot be avoided. Solely because a few vore games offer a mix between vore scenarios I like and ones that I hate; Often times I have to choose between not playing a game and giving it a try, and when I chose the later and ran into a vore sequence I didn't like I'd look away from the screen while spamming Enter to skip through the dialogue.

Now of course, this suggestion might make the game less realistic; It's not like in an actual vore scenario, a pred will ask you whether you like them or not... sometimes they are part of the story so you can't easily give the user a choice. Still I think some flexibility could be introduced; One way is making it more obvious when a pred is coming toward you, and being sure the player has enough time to react and avoid them... the trade-off is of course no real difficulty. Another solution could be giving the player a list of characters and scenes before starting a new game, and letting them uncheck every vore scene they don't like (eg: "I don't want to see character A being prey to character B in a vore type C scenario")... when an entry is then disabled, scenes that match are simply skipped and you get an instant "game over" screen or continue rather than seeing the vore cutscene.

[Bronzehawkz]

When the reward of a game actually comes from losing rather than winning, I hate it when the game makes it far too easy to win. I'm specifically talking about games where you're the prey (Since that's all I play).
I don't want to have to lose on purpose all the time to get scenes, nor do I want to have to make blatantly dumb decisions in order to lose.
It's much better when it feels like I was just overpowered, outsmarted, or I simply made an unwise decision that was subtly hinted at by the game.

This next one isn't a complaint per se but more of an opinion of what vore games should do, is that I think if you're going to primarily or exclusively make the player prey, you should have your game overs revolve around that rather than just using the typical RPG "You died, now reload" system.
It's no secret that half of the player who play the game will be trying to get themselves killed a lot, so there should be some mechanic in place that takes advantage of that. For example in the GTS game Little Snatcher there is no true game over scenario, if you die you can respawn at a checkpoint anywhere in the map, keeping all of your progress, while also having the enemies level up as a result of killing you (This can be reset in case you fuck up too hard). While that's not exactly a revolutionary thing to do, I think systems like that should be considered for vore games.

[darkevilme]

Some observations bring me to yet another element in nearly all vore games, which I missed last time but does often prove to be an annoyance.

I'm not sure how many people will agree with me here, but personally I'm starting to hate vore scenes that cannot be avoided. Solely because a few vore games offer a mix between vore scenarios I like and ones that I hate; Often times I have to choose between not playing a game and giving it a try, and when I chose the later and ran into a vore sequence I didn't like I'd look away from the screen while spamming Enter to skip through the dialogue.

Now of course, this suggestion might make the game less realistic; It's not like in an actual vore scenario, a pred will ask you whether you like them or not... sometimes they are part of the story so you can't easily give the user a choice. Still I think some flexibility could be introduced; One way is making it more obvious when a pred is coming toward you, and being sure the player has enough time to react and avoid them... the trade-off is of course no real difficulty. Another solution could be giving the player a list of characters and scenes before starting a new game, and letting them uncheck every vore scene they don't like (eg: "I don't want to see character A being prey to character B in a vore type C scenario")... when an entry is then disabled, scenes that match are simply skipped and you get an instant "game over" screen or continue rather than seeing the vore cutscene.

not to toot my own horn, but i'm gonna. In discordia's tale I had a preference journal that helped to check/uncheck things. and In nomad there's preferences.txt file that allows the player to screen out say...CTF or CV. Admittedly, I don't have a preference tag for those who'd want to screen out demis. I do for ferals though and nomad contains no anthros at the present time. I suppose it's a matter of what I consider most banal that means demis don't get a tag.

Anyway. This is an idea I've implemented before so it's do-able and others should totally do it if they're catering to a broad range of fetishes.

[mZmm]

Content avoidance systems, unless they're a built in mechanic like in Jit's Pranks and Some Predation and the game is built around it, are often quite clunky and take the player out of the game (this is why I'm not adding it to the hotel).

[2quick4u]

I hate not being able to toggle off things altar aren't to my tastes.

I hate male preds. I hate scat. I hate graphic/painful digestion. I hate farts. And I hate anything other than implied disposal.

And like you already stated in the OP, I hate the random chance between Endo, Fatal, and Non-fatal. The chance cheapens everything, especially on mobile where you CAN'T SAVE QUEST PROGRESS.

I'd rather it be a direct cause and effect for multiple outcome scenes. Such as not struggling for certain preds, or attempting to give them indigestion.

Also, I hate that there is a giant lack of fem-cum digestion in many games and interact stories.