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[therahedwig]

So, this was inspired by one of the hype threads. Romance, friendship and family are unmet needs in adventure mode right now. And I am kinda wondering, how would engaging in it look like? So, I could make a FotF question of this, or put something in the suggestions forum, but I am just really curious how others are imagining it? So I'd like to have an open discussion about it.

I'm also a little curious because it is a general question within game design as well. Most games, as one guy recently put it, have romance consist of your character just repeatedly hitting on a character until the romance plot thread kicks in.

So I have some questions I am curious about, and I wanna see what people come up with:

1. How do you imagine your adventurer starting a relationship with another character? So, what do you feel should trigger romance, friendship, adoption, grudges, rivalries, etc.

2. How do you think the game should handle the NPC's agency? Should it be possible to 'game' your way into a relationship, so for example, if you really wanted your adventurer to date this one NPC, should it override immediately, or should it allow the NPC to reject, and should it be possible for you as player to understand the NPC's psyche and give the right answers to make them your lover or grudge?

2b. Should the NPC always give clear feedback about their rejection(which is far more user friendly), or, like the real world possibly being too awkward not be able to give feedback beyond 'no'?

3. Should NPCs attempt to engage into relationships themselves? Should they decide you are their rival or friend without you starting this relationship?

4. How about single-sided relationships? Like your adventurer decides they are the rival of an NPC, but the NPC is none the wiser. Would you want to see these, how would you engage in them?

5. When do you expect certain relationships just kinda happen? Like, friendships, if you travel with a dude for a few months, are you friends? If you take care of a child npc for a certain amount of time, are you a parental figure? If you manage to avoid getting killed by a certain dude, are you automatically their arch enemy?

6. Trust and intimacy? How should the game model mental intimacy like, really knowing someone, being able to read them really well, being able to understand their needs, being able to trust them with secrets, etc. How do you expect the social skills to interact with this?

7. Maintenance? Change? Can a relationship rust? How do you see this happen?

I'd like to avoid all discussions of sex, on the basis that I just don't want to sit through 15 pages of people discussing whether rape or any other complicated sex topic should be in the game. I'm just curious how people are seeing the non-physical parts. Please help me by not engaging with anyone starting on these topics.

[Rubik]

The Romance/Social arc will come only when you can have a good control on what to hear and what to say in-game
So, if given a Social interaction menu (similar to the combat system) I don't think there's nothing stopping you from using several communication tools to befriend or romance someone

It's really funny to think on toady researching this, but you must think of all those date sim games, different people react to different approaches differently, and if you want to get to one place or the other with them, you really gotta ''push the different buttons'' accordingly

How does this translate to DF?

Well, in the combat system, all the atacks and personal qualities you can use/are are determined by the raws on your creature, you can use modifiers to your atack, and combat's better strategy is timing. leveling up on certain skills help

They say war and love works similarly right? So let's try to draw parallels

In a romance system, certain interactions suffer buffs or nerfs in effectivity determined by your personality (think boasting done by someone with very little pride, for example), your mood in the moment of talking (this also applies to faked moods btw) with someone also affects how this person will perceive you, it's another modifier
moods also affect how you perceive other people and actions, if you have been treasoned recently, you won't really form strong new relationships soon, you'll be distrusting, etc. So in romance and social interactions timing also seems to be very important

And, the most common thing for both love and combat is that levelling up certain skill really does affect success

On the gamification of a relationship system, you gotta realize there's always people that'll find the most optimal way to do something. Min-maxing is a way, likeable or not, to play a game, as equal to others. Yeah, maybe I find breaking up with my gf to be emotionally dumb myself as to fight a FB that feeds of your hope and hapyness more effectively a little bit wretched, but that's how DF is

On the dinamism of relationships, it's also a trait of personality and experience based traits
Some people, over the course of their lives, learn the value of friendship, and as so, are impervious to the effects of relationship rust, for an example
we literally have values already, so it'd be a good idea to give them such an use

A relationship goes where two people take it. As a player, you have control on what to do and what not to do, but unless toady really makes a good npc IA, then knowing people probably it's gonna be a little bit bland and not very complex
I hope it really isn't like that, and given that the very next update talks about how people can have ulterior motivations you dont know about and act them on their own without telling anybody, I think we can really expect relationships to be complex and satisfactory



Really, most of your questions, or almost all questions can be answered to how toady is gonna make the relationship sytem work out, what is considered an stimulus, and what not, how complex or abstracted he'll make it, that thing

On relatively short term, I think you can expect someone understanding you've saved them if you kill the person atacking them, and that can lead to (if his gratitude value is high) to an automatic affection and trust, leveling up your relationship to friendship. If afterwards you even consider each other cool dudes, you can easily grow into best friends and stuff like that


I just wrote all of this rant in one setting without making any formal order and just saying things as they came to mind, so feel free to ask questions

[therahedwig]

Well, I was not just thinking in terms of 'does someone like you', but also in terms of 'does someone trust you' and 'does someone know you'.

Like, yes, 'does someone like you', that type of stuff can be dealt with through skills, interactions and feelings. But for example, 'does someone trust you' could affect how likely a figure is to follow your orders without question. You could for example not particularly like your doctor's personality, but you'd trust them not to hurt you when you let them examine your body. (Though admittedly, maybe these two can be merged).

Similarly, 'does someone know you' could give an sense of intimacy. You can know your family members and friends really well, and thus determine their goals and dreams and predict their responses to things, as well as read their demeanor. Like, you can tell that if you know your father enjoys gardening, that he is excited for spring, because it means he can go and garden. And this doesn't have to do anything with liking someone. You could have two archenemies that hate each other's guts, but over the years they've accumulated a lot of knowledge about one another and thus are able to predict what the other will do.

On the opposite end, this also covers the idea of the figure who values friendship. If they haven't seen a friend over several years, they might still love them and trust them(a prevention of relationship rust), but might not be able to read their friends at all. (Think of how this would work with a kidnapped friend, or one that went through war-trauma)

But you feel that players should be able to game the 'liking' part of a relationship, because that'd fit in the style of DF. Does that mean that it makes sense to you that an NPC can reject you?

And you feel we should have a better social interactions menu. I agree, there's only so much you can do with the current menu. Not sure if it per se needs a 'social wrestling' menu, but we do need a bit more than 'spread rumour, argue about values'.

[Bortness]

It will be terrifying.

[DwarvenLord]

I don't know anything about coding, but I imagine love could work like this: most people could be happy with multiple people. But a minority of histfigs could have a token called (TRUE_LOVE) where they will only ever be happy with one person. They would instantly know who it is just by eye contact. The other partner could be anyone with the (TRUE_LOVE) token and their personality traits have to align. Not match; there personality traits could be opposite; just align in a certain way. Having the (TRUE_LOVE) token doesn't mean you can't be with someone else; it just means  you have an enormous happiness drop if you are. All adventurers would have this trait by default; You can edit another token, possibly something like(ADV_HAVE_TRUE_LOVE:YES)
and change it to "no" to never have the (TRUE_LOVE) token in adventurers or to a number to have a random chance to have the trait. If you see your true love, a pop-up announcement says, something like 'Love at first sight!' or something else that is equally cringey. That could be interesting if you see your true love... But you are a vampiric necromancer with a horde of zombies going to kill him/her.

[therahedwig]

Ah, you're a real romantic!

So for you it's important that we get all the really emotional stuff like 'falling in love at first sight' in place, so we get all of that sweet drama? Maybe it could be something tied to cultural values, like a culture that values romance and loyalty could really glorify the idea of a 'one true love' and thus require your character to search for it.

[Egan_BW]

The idea of characters who are deterministic in some way and you have force them to love you just by doing things they like does not appeal. Not only is it gamey, it's creepy.

[therahedwig]

I agree it is creepy, on the other hand it does allow for a type of villainy right, letting the player be creepy?

On the other hand, that doesn't mean anything if it is the default way to interact with NPCs. So what kind of non-creepy methods would there be? Maybe we can say that NPCs will always be trying to gauge how much your character means something meaning creepy behaviour can backfire at any given moment? Maybe we can say that NPCs require a certain kind of 'slog' to go through, like very long term nice behaviour.

This kind of stuff would also be important to think about if we get mind-bending magics, and stuff like love potions and popularity spells. NPCs should react super negatively on discovering you lied or used this kind of magic.

But these are negative reinforcement, what kind of thing can be thought of that would make a non-gamey relationship with an NPC be more satisfying than a gamed one? Just the satisfaction of the emergent story of having a close consistent companion? Maybe a better source of social comfort not to the player, but certainly the player character?

[DwarvenLord]

You could just choose you love someone, and have a struggle to win their hearts. But that feels like the video game equivalent of meta-gaming.

[callisto8413]

I expect a lot of crying, staying up late at night staring at the ceiling, eating my super as the wife complains about my lack of advancement at the tavern, as my Adventurer remembers when he use to be happy and free before marrying, having five kids, and become a local bar keep.

Too detailed?