This is my opinion, I'm not a game designer, criticism welcome!
Monster Girl games (or other games that feature a submissive protagonist) often have most of their lewd content locked behind a loss event, i.e. when you get defeated, your enemy gets to have their way with you. If you happen to win, you can of course watch the scene later in the gallery, but getting sexually dominated by an oponent that bested you in a (fair) challenge can really spike your arousal if you're into it; I like to call this feeling "Sweet Defeat". However, I personally get this feeling only when I actually tried my best and still got defeated fair and square. The point is, I want to fail by genuinely losing, not by losing on purpose.
This brings me to the difficulty of those games. Ideally, you want to progress in the game without getting frustrated or bored but you also want to experience the Sweet Defeat, that's why you play an adult game after all. In normal, non-adult game design, the game ideally increases its difficulty along with the skill you gain while playing the game. This puts you in a state of flow, where you constantly face fair challenges, which you can feel accomplished about. In our adult games however, losing is kind of the point, ideally the player fails each challenge exactly once. This way, he can experience the Sweet Defeat and lewd scene, followed by the feeling of accomplishment after beating the challenge on the second try. Overall, this allows progression in the game without frustration.
In reality, one defeat per challenge would not be set in stone, but would be an average value; meaning you win some challenges on the first try and need multiple attempts on others. You might feel that 1.0 defeats per challenge is too high, maybe 0.75 or 0.5 would be better. Maybe you would even want 1.3 if the challenges have multiple different defeat scenes. Whatever you feel is right, manualy dialing the game's difficulty up or down to reach this ideal ratio has two caveats:
1. Changing the difficulty too often (or at all) kind of breaks immersion. The drive to perfect your experience distracts you from what's really important: the game itself.
2. High difficulty settings are often not well implemented in my opinion. Sometimes you need to get lucky to win, the challenge gets dragged out for too long or the game becomes grindier because you need better gear.
I can't say much about the second issue except "pls fix". But to address the first one, I'd like to see games use a dynamic difficulty system where the difficulty gets adjusted to cater to your preferred experience on the fly. Here are some ideas:
- Allow the player to set their prefered "defeats per challenge" ratio and recommend one
- Continuosly adjust the difficulty in a subtle way, depending on the player's performace
- After the first failed attempt on a challenge, only decrease difficulty by a little bit or not at all; the player typically wants to try a second time without help
- Offer the player to make challenges harder in return for greater rewards, or easier in return for penalties. That way, if the player really does (or doesn't) want to see a specific defeat scene, they can improve the odds.
- When facing the same challenge a second time after already beating it (recurring oponent), the difficulty can be increased depending on your performance before. This can get you a second chance at seeing the defeat scene. Maybe say "Your opponent has learned from their defeat is now stronger" or something.
- Maybe compensate if the player hasn't played in a long time
I played some games with a (non-dynamic) difficulty that felt good and I've seen about half of the defeat scenes in those. So, maybe 0.5 is the way to go? Let me know what you think. Would a dynamic difficulty system be worth the development effort?
Monster Girl games (or other games that feature a submissive protagonist) often have most of their lewd content locked behind a loss event, i.e. when you get defeated, your enemy gets to have their way with you. If you happen to win, you can of course watch the scene later in the gallery, but getting sexually dominated by an oponent that bested you in a (fair) challenge can really spike your arousal if you're into it; I like to call this feeling "Sweet Defeat". However, I personally get this feeling only when I actually tried my best and still got defeated fair and square. The point is, I want to fail by genuinely losing, not by losing on purpose.
This brings me to the difficulty of those games. Ideally, you want to progress in the game without getting frustrated or bored but you also want to experience the Sweet Defeat, that's why you play an adult game after all. In normal, non-adult game design, the game ideally increases its difficulty along with the skill you gain while playing the game. This puts you in a state of flow, where you constantly face fair challenges, which you can feel accomplished about. In our adult games however, losing is kind of the point, ideally the player fails each challenge exactly once. This way, he can experience the Sweet Defeat and lewd scene, followed by the feeling of accomplishment after beating the challenge on the second try. Overall, this allows progression in the game without frustration.
In reality, one defeat per challenge would not be set in stone, but would be an average value; meaning you win some challenges on the first try and need multiple attempts on others. You might feel that 1.0 defeats per challenge is too high, maybe 0.75 or 0.5 would be better. Maybe you would even want 1.3 if the challenges have multiple different defeat scenes. Whatever you feel is right, manualy dialing the game's difficulty up or down to reach this ideal ratio has two caveats:
1. Changing the difficulty too often (or at all) kind of breaks immersion. The drive to perfect your experience distracts you from what's really important: the game itself.
2. High difficulty settings are often not well implemented in my opinion. Sometimes you need to get lucky to win, the challenge gets dragged out for too long or the game becomes grindier because you need better gear.
I can't say much about the second issue except "pls fix". But to address the first one, I'd like to see games use a dynamic difficulty system where the difficulty gets adjusted to cater to your preferred experience on the fly. Here are some ideas:
- Allow the player to set their prefered "defeats per challenge" ratio and recommend one
- Continuosly adjust the difficulty in a subtle way, depending on the player's performace
- After the first failed attempt on a challenge, only decrease difficulty by a little bit or not at all; the player typically wants to try a second time without help
- Offer the player to make challenges harder in return for greater rewards, or easier in return for penalties. That way, if the player really does (or doesn't) want to see a specific defeat scene, they can improve the odds.
- When facing the same challenge a second time after already beating it (recurring oponent), the difficulty can be increased depending on your performance before. This can get you a second chance at seeing the defeat scene. Maybe say "Your opponent has learned from their defeat is now stronger" or something.
- Maybe compensate if the player hasn't played in a long time
I played some games with a (non-dynamic) difficulty that felt good and I've seen about half of the defeat scenes in those. So, maybe 0.5 is the way to go? Let me know what you think. Would a dynamic difficulty system be worth the development effort?