Stardew Valley

Re: Poly relationships in gaming,

I've always said that the easiest way to do this is have the player be the third joining a pre-established relationship.

Choosing two characters independently is kinda a nightmare on logistics and resources, especially the more character-content heavy the game is. I remember back in the day a lot of people dreamed of choosing two Love Interests for something like Dragon Age 2 and I always saw that as a terrible idea because half the cast fucking loathe each other. In ways that are simply not compatible for a relationship or healthy.

Some players might simply go; "Well, it's my power fantasy and I like both so write them to make it work". And, while I get the logic of it, not every character *should* be romantically compatible with every other character. I kinda feel like, unless you're an impressively deft writer and have all the time/resources, making every character compatible or friendly with each other might wind up making a cast of very bland characters who don't make extreme or interesting character decisions.

Sure, opposites attract, but sometimes opposites are so opposed for a reason. And... well, romantic compatibility between three separate individuals is kinda what poly is all about. It's not always fun and it can be the hardest part, but recognizing when you're not compatible with the people or the relationship dynamic is mature and adult.

Having two established characters to which the PC joins as a third gives the creators a lot more control over the situation to give it more quality rather than checking the box of every combination possible.

Actually, I saw a study that showed that opposites don't really attract all that much, and that people care much more about what they have in common than about what they don't.

I suspect the "opposites attract" thing may just be a cultural myth to get women to feel better about marrying people they don't really like or get along with. In other words, there's some sexism buried in that idea.

And man, this is a huge update, again.

Edited by Redmess on Mar 23rd 2024 at 3:30:32 PM

Pretty sure most people just want someone hot and rich/powerful and everything else is a secondary factor.

Also man I was really waiting to start a new Stardew file as soon as the patch dropped but like a week beforehand I started playing Civ 6 again. I did finally update all my mods last night at least.

Edited by Arha on Mar 23rd 2024 at 11:21:58 AM

I don't think most people are that shallow, really.

It's not like the other stuff doesn't matter and can even be a deal breaker, but, well, physical attraction does seem to be a pretty big part of overall attraction.

But that's neither here nor there. This is Stardew Valley where everyone attractive also generally has a good personality and roughly similar levels of financial stability. ...Apart from Shane.

I was looking at the Desert Festival on the wiki and at first I thought it sounded stupidly broken until I realized the exchange rates were not what I thought they were. I thought it was two eggs for a hundred deluxe fertilizer and thought that was insane but then I realized it's actually a stock of one hundred total that you probably buy one at a time. Though I do question some of the balance problems some of the new items in the game may cause without something substantial to counter them.

Though let's be real, people who have been playing the game for years probably aren't super challenged by anything in it anymore anyway.

x4

I mean, sure, that's an entire conversation in of itself.

I tend to find that it would be more accurate to say opposites attract aesthetically. That people will generally be attracted to like-minded core values, but who's aesthetics or hobbies might veer wildly from their partner's.

Or, in simpler terms, it only looks like opposites attract.

Even in fiction I find this applies as "Opposites Attract" love narratives either have two routes...

either the relationship is TOTALLY abusive and one person's consent and attractions are completely over-ruled (which is a different can of worms for a different conversation)...

or the "opposite" aspect is somewhat overplayed- the villain isn't so villainous after all. The roguish bad-boy doesn't have the hard edges they appear to have. Probably one of the most classic in media; Han and Leia in Star Wars, isn't all that opposite because Han ultimately chooses to be the good guy and save the day inspite of all his values of doing it for the money.

Anyway, you did kinda side with my initial point; choosing two characters in a large cast would cause characterization issues when you have characters who fundamentally would not work together in a relationship and that's ok.

That's kind of it, really. A significant portion of the target audience for games with romantic content want a harem composed of any individual characters they want. By that token, poly relationships in games are rarely a true polycule, they're usually a harem. Even Fate/stay night kinda fumbles on this (in that the route where Shirou gets both Rin and Saber is not the route where Saber is Rin's Closet Key, fanon about them being Rin's harem aside).

It's also probably worth noting that most games with an EXPLICIT poly romance (instead of just "you can romance multiple characters and they won't yell at you") use canon romantic resolutions. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 didn't have the player pick between Pyra, Mythra, or Nia; the game ended with Rex picking Pyra and Mythra, and then Xenoblade Chronicles 3 reveals that Nia got in on that at some point.

On the one hand, it makes sense because it would complicate the ending to let you do every combination of love interest. On the other hand, it also misses out on the best unique parts of stories in games, which is player choice and interaction. For good or ill, the player can't prevent the polycule in Xenoblade; the only way to avoid that ending is to fail to finish the game.

I'm rambling. This is hardly the place to discuss how choice affects stories in games, if a choice-driven story or an on-the-rails cinematic story is better. I'm just saying that I don't expect a choice-driven polyamory situation to be front and center in a major game any time soon, because that requires a LOT of extra time and effort to make.

...

Or just go the route I suggested earlier?

Have two NP Cs be in an established relationship and invite the PC to be their third?

I honestly fail to see any real problems with this approach as that's also fairly realistic; I know plenty of people who have been or are in poly relationships and one relationship started first and it grew to incorporate a third person over time.

Might just be personal experience bias, but I don't think I've heard of a poly relationship starting at the same time for all three individuals.

It cuts down on the resource allocation, writers still can have a controlled hand on the experience, and it could still be a perfectly acceptable representation of a poly dynamic. Sounds like win-win to me.

At the absolute worst, it's a singular romance path with two NP Cs rather than a coming together of three separate characters, but again- realism of game development. The only other legitimate criticism I might levy at it is that I think a lot of games would probably avoid the intersection of some identities there (i.e. The relationship in question would be "the poly option" as represented with a heterosexual-presenting couple and unlikely to overlap "poly" and "gay men" identities), but we're maybe talking beyond even poly so much as being at the table.

Sorry, I was actually originally going to respond to agree to that, and then there were other replies and I forgot about it.

My question is, are there games that actually do that? Because it's a good idea, but I can't think of any examples.

I think a truly poly game would be very hard to make for the reasons mentioned above, because you'd have to write an extra bit of story for any two love interests to get them to get along (if you are going for the "unique conflicting snowflakes" approach, that is). Every added love interest would greatly increase the number of combinations in a non-linear fashion.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker springs to mind, plus a visual novel and text-based indie game or two.

Edited by Tarlonniel on Mar 25th 2024 at 5:08:32 AM

Ugh, why is the resolution in this game such a pain? Everything is tiny when I put it to my PC's resolution, but when I put it on a smaller resolution, it just blacks out the game screen, or it ends up messing up all my other windows.

There is an option to scale up the UI separate from the general resolution.

Yeah, but it only goes up to 150, when I need 200 for a 4K monitor.

I know it's a bit of a meme but I think the School Days series does kind of point out how difficult it would be to make something like that would out and limit what your potential options actually are.

School Days series?

It has nice boats in it I heard.

VN that got turned into an anime where a dimwit finds himself in a love triangle. Being a VN, he has multiple choices, some of which lets him get with one, some with the other, some with both, some with neither, some disemboweled, some with etc etc. The anime is a meme 'cause it adapted a bad ending where he was the douchiest douchebag you could possibly play as and got murdered for it. But setting aside the meme, while it was very easy to get a good ending with either one solo or a number of side characters, trying to get both was pretty difficult since, among other things, they don't like each other very much.

Edited by Arha on Mar 25th 2024 at 6:26:30 AM

Oh hush, I'm way into V Ns as it is lately.

I found School Days kind of hard to play through due to the entire thing being animated, which is a style I don't think many other companies tried.

So I got around to starting a new file and I have to ask... is it just me, or are there a lot of new things to make the game easier but not many new challenges to balance them out?

Okay, I think we're officially way off topic now.

All the girls are cute.

• Maybe I will finally learn how to mod on Steme Deck so I can play Ridgeside Village my laptop can't handle it.

Huh, I took a look at the wiki and 1.6 changed some old recipes in addition to introducing a whole bunch of new ones.

Can't wait for 1.6 to arrive on the Switch version.

I hope the Switch's world seeds will remain the same, or import the calculations from the PC version. "25" has an Ancient Seed for sale at the traveling trader on the first week for 600 G.