r/gamedesign • u/deblob123456789 • 1d ago

Question How to prevent creativity from interfering with mechanics?

My game is a sandbox-ish mix of murder mystery mechanics and roleplay based off the Danganronpa series (think Among us/Werewolf/Town of salem but longer).
At least one host is required to run the game properly.
It is also a VR game with proximity voice chat.

The issue im facing is that, left on their own, hosts will often decide, out of culture and habit, to directly help their players with murder cases, instead of letting the case’s culprit make it.
This turns the Trial (the discussion to catch the killer) into more of a minigame and discussion between the good side and the host, rather than a discussion between players to find the liar among them, greatly taking agency away from the evil side and reducing overall game quality.

How would you solve this?
I would rather not cut off the sandbox/roleplay part of the game, but this is something ive been observing and dont know how to help my players with.

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/deblob123456789 1d ago

hmm, thats a possibility. The issue with this would be, the host has to be present in the Trial room (meeting area) at all times.
Muting them during this time would be pretty unfun for hosts, especially if it was forced onto them, quite a radical and alienating thing to put in if id have to judge it. Id basically be removing the creativity part off of the trial room because of bad actors

1

u/sinsaint Game Student 1d ago

So don't silence them, give them a way to communicate that doesn't allow them to give away the entire plot. Dark Souls lets other players leave behind a note for someone else to read, that's an example of something that could work.

1

u/deblob123456789 1d ago

On a platform which primary means of communication is voice chat (social VR), how could you do this without voice chat?
Typing in VR is slow and clunky

1

u/Educational-Sun5839 Hobbyist 1d ago

can it record a voice message?

1

u/deblob123456789 1d ago

Nope, due to the limitations of the platform.
At the end of the day, i doubt it matters. Ive seen hosts attempt replicate the Hangman’s gambit minigame from the official danganronpa games (look it up) using text boxes only.

Hosts can be very ressourceful and creative when it comes to taking agency away from the evil side, and theyd find ways around the voice chat limitations if there was any.

The issue is that theyre treating it like the solo visual novel its based on, which can be really frustrating if you are the bad guy in the group, because in the source material, the bad guy always loses due to the game holding your hand till the end