Things that you want to see less of in Visual Novels

[Ranzo]

Okay, I'm pretty sure that most of us here love Visual Novels, but with everything that you love there's always something you are bound to dislike. So, without further ado what are things/elements/ideas that you would like to see less of in Visual Novels.

Here are mine. I would like to see...

Less childhood friends.

Less characters who think that a dumb promise that they made when they were kids counts as a sacred vow, which has since been codified into law.

Less obnoxious class representatives.

Less inane chatter that passes for dialogue.

Less protagonists who's only character defining characteristic is a variation on average /guy/high school student/fucker.

Less otomie protagonists who are weak and vulnerable and wholly dependent on the hero.

Less high school students.

Less high schools.

Less virgins.

Less high pitched screeching.

Less characters that think that random acts of violence counts as a endearing character trait.

Less characters that love spouting lines and lines of dialogue about pretentious, philosophical, psychobabble.

Less characters that insist on referring to themselves only in the third person, even though no one talks like that, no one has ever talked like that.

Less poorly thought out, poorly written, poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly plotted sex scenes.

 

Anyway, that is my laundry list pretty much taken care of, what's yours?

[Yuuko]

Less English

[Dergonu]

Less meaningless choices. I want the choices I pick to make a difference. Meaningless choices are my biggest pet peeve in VNs. Like, why are they even there?! Grrr... 

[Thatcomicguy]

Less meaningless bad ends that don't do anything expect take you back to the main menu

Less Lolis *Sorry Mitch*

 

[MaggieROBOT]

5 minutes ago, Ranzo said:

Less characters who think that a dumb promise that they made when they were kids counts as a sacred vow, which has since been codified into law.

Less high schools.

Less high pitched screeching.

Less characters that love spouting lines and lines of dialogue about pretentious, philosophical, psychobabble.

AMEN AMEN!

This and I add less characters that their moe trait is supposedly being insufferable dumb, less faceless MCs and less retarded harem tropes.

[Clephas]

Less 'average guy' protagonists, regardless of age or setting.

Less meaningless (doesn't progress the story or develop the characters) slice of life.

Less unreasonably violent tsundere.

Less osananajimi heroines (side-characters are fine, though)

Less making a great setting then not using it in any of the heroine paths.

Less meaningless/random h-scenes.

Less meaningless choices/false player agency.

Stop having school as the main setting for 90% of all VNs.

Less romance as the pinpoint focus of a VN (don't get rid of it, just stop making it 90% of the focus of most VNs)

No more ladder-style story structure (ex: G-senjou no Maou, Hatou, Eustia, etc)

[Ranzo]

Oh and less characters whose only response to the things that happen to them is, "It can't be helped."

[Clephas]

1 minute ago, Ranzo said:

Oh and less characters whose only response to the things that happen to them is, "It can't be helped."

'Shikatanai' is probably one of the most commonly-used expressions of resignation in both verbal and written Japanese... you probably won't see it disappear.  It is a cultural disease at all levels of society.

[VirginSmasher]

Less moege.

Less moege cliches

Less moral-oriented protagonists and heroines

Less SoL that doesn't have actual comedy.

[Asonn]

Less highschool heroines. 

Less adult heroines

[VirginSmasher]

2 minutes ago, Asonn said:

Less highschool heroines. 

Less adult heroines

Just remove all heroines. They're useless anyways.

[Yuuko]

Just now, VirginSmasher said:

Just remove all heroines. They're useless anyways.

They are more useful than you...

 

at least for sex

[Silvz]

Less main characters without face when they are not "you"

Less non-dubbed main characters

Less meaningless text that add nothing to the story

Less meaningless games as a whole

Less "dark" plots that end up being bulshit

Less complicate route systems - just gimme my ending

What I want more is voice acting. It's sad when some great vns depend only on sound effects.

 

[VirginSmasher]

17 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

They are more useful than you...

 

at least for sex

[frc_]

Less faceless characters in general. They freak me out.

Less MCs with dicks the size of their upper arm and balls with the capacity to coat a girl in semen five times over.

Less overly long H scenes that describe every last thrust, squelch and splort in excrutiating detail.

[Ranzo]

42 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

AMEN AMEN!

This and I add less characters that their moe trait is supposedly being insufferable dumb, less faceless MCs and less retarded harem tropes.

Yeah! How could I forget that. Less characters that are too stupid to live!

34 minutes ago, Clephas said:

'Shikatanai' is probably one of the most commonly-used expressions of resignation in both verbal and written Japanese... you probably won't see it disappear.  It is a cultural disease at all levels of society.

I know, I know but a man can dream.

[-soraa]

Less Hetare Protagonists like in Hatuskoi 1/1 

[tymmur]

32 minutes ago, Ranzo said:

Less high pitched screeching.

This got to be number one.  There are VNs where I have to disable the voice of some heroines because the high pitch voice is a pain, which I can't stand.

34 minutes ago, Ranzo said:

Less virgins.

Easy solution: play the game. They aren't virgins at the end

35 minutes ago, Ranzo said:

Less poorly thought out, poorly written, poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly plotted sex scenes.

Yeah, make something, which is actually worth reading. It often becomes 200 lines of "what goes where", "it feels good" and moans.

 

My own list

Less language barriers

Less bad translations

Less traps (0 sounds like a good number)

Less pointless dialogue

Less violence (not counting say killing monsters)

Less cruelty

Less generic (well everything, generic characters in a generic school doing generic stuff resulting in generic H scenes)

Less nukige

Less mixing good and bad stuff, as in releasing a really good VN, which suddenly switches to say H scene activities you don't want to see

Less stories without any interesting contents or development

Less stories where your choices have little influence (Utawarerumono is hard to replay due to being able to display all scenes in one playthrough almost independently of choices)

Less characters without a well developed personality

[HMN]

Less characters I want to have sex with but I can't reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

26 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

They are more useful than you...

 

at least for sex

[tymmur]

1 minute ago, HMN said:

Or maybe no heroines at all

Oh that reminds me:

Less BL (at least if I'm supposed to be the reader)

[Ranzo]

9 minutes ago, tymmur said:

This got to be number one.  There are VNs where I have to disable the voice of some heroines because the high pitch voice is a pain, which I can't stand.

Easy solution: play the game. They aren't virgins at the end

Yeah, make something, which is actually worth reading. It often becomes 200 lines of "what goes where", "it feels good" and moans.

 

I just want to see a little less blood man, at least in that respect.

You are forgetting such classics as, "My hips are moving on their own, I feel you in my womb," and you're tearing me up inside."

[Fiddle]

1 hour ago, Ranzo said:

Less childhood friends.

Less characters who think that a dumb promise that they made when they were kids counts as a sacred vow, which has since been codified into law.

Less obnoxious class representatives.

Less inane chatter that passes for dialogue.

Less protagonists who's only character defining characteristic is a variation on average /guy/high school student/fucker.

Less otomie protagonists who are weak and vulnerable and wholly dependent on the hero.

Less high school students.

Less high schools.

Less virgins.

Less high pitched screeching.

Less characters that think that random acts of violence counts as a endearing character trait.

Less characters that love spouting lines and lines of dialogue about pretentious, philosophical, psychobabble.

Less characters that insist on referring to themselves only in the third person, even though no one talks like that, no one has ever talked like that.

Less poorly thought out, poorly written, poorly planned, poorly executed, poorly plotted sex scenes.

It sounds like your underlying preference is "less humans," which is understandable at times.

[PiggiesGoMoo]

Fewer fight scenes!!  I know I"m in the minority here, but I really think the VN format doesn't lend itself to these types of scenes very well.  The static reused CGs make those scenes seem very repetitive compared to manga and anime.  

I will say that Majikoi tries to work around this limitation in an interesting way. Rather than using CGs, it just moves/flips character sprites around on screen. I think it can get away with this because there aren't any "magical powers" AFAIK, and the fights are short.  I had a really hard time reading through the long fight scenes in Dies Irae and Sorcery Jokers, even though I enjoyed the latter overall (not the former, please don't kill me).

Edited March 17, 2018 by PiggiesGoMoo

[Yuuko]

4 minutes ago, PiggiesGoMoo said:

Fewer fight scenes!!  I know I"m in the minority here, but I really think the VN format doesn't lend itself to these types of scenes very well.  The static reused CGs make those scenes seem very repetitive compared to manga and anime.  

I will say that Majikoi tries to work around this limitation in an interesting way. Rather than using CGs, it just moves/flips character sprites around on screen. I think it can get away with this because there aren't any "magical powers" AFAIK, and the fights are short.  I had a really hard time reading through the long fight scenes in Dies Irae and Sorcery Jokers, even though I enjoyed the latter overall (not the former, please don't kill me).

 

[Dreamysyu]

1 hour ago, Clephas said:

Less romance as the pinpoint focus of a VN (don't get rid of it, just stop making it 90% of the focus of most VNs)

This!

 

Also:

Less stupid characters in general, especially protags.

Less cliches.

Less stupid and not thought-out sci-fi (though I would like more sci-fi in general).

Less overly convenient plot points.

Lower female-to-male ratio of the characters, maybe just a bit.

Less h-scenes that harm the pacing (I don't care about h-scenes in general).