Esoteric Update #217 - Contentious Gameplay Mechanics?

Hmmm... well, this might be a weird one. Anyway, let's get to it with some lore first:

Lore: The Forest Is Not Dark

Now then, the update proper. And if you are reading this, please, try to see if you have any input on what I write at the end, as it is important to me.

First, let's start with the minor things. I did some writing, of course, and did some coding too. With the latter, I went deeper than usual, as I discovered some bugs and oversights. Funnily enough, the "biggest" issue, which I spent quite some time fixing, ended up being better handled by a 3 line code fix that also, in the process, reduced the size of save files. Overall, it was a few separate issues I accidentally ran into while writing and decided to amend ASAP. It went fine. I also made some more changes to how pruning off grammatical results works to preemptively solve issues I've foreseen in the future that would affect the quality of the game's output.

This isn't really what I want to talk about right now, though.

During all of this, I ended up testing out a pair of features that were discussed very early in the game's development, but we didn't have any practical way of implementing them yet. Well, we worked up to the point where we can now do them, and so I did, but one of them ended up being quite contentious, and as such, I'd like some input on it. And maybe this much less controversial mechanic as well.

So to start with this simpler one... It's undeniable that the game does use its own nomenclature for a lot of things, and that can present a kind of barrier of entry for people who sit down to it. The idea, from the start, was to have tooltips within the game, but initially, we had no good way of doing them to make the insertion process manageable. Well, we have that now, and it turns out to be pretty flexible in what it can do.

Let's look at this example bit of code, where we ask the word "term" to be defined (twice):

Yet, we only see the tooltip bubble once. So what's up? While part of the issue is just getting the tooltip to easily get inserted into the text, and here it's clearly done using an extension (ext command, I did say a while ago that extensions will be useful). But the other part of it has always posed a more significant issue: the repetitive nature of the tooltips. How often do we have to tell the player what an "Elb" is, for example? When is the first time the player encounters the term and needs it defined? Part of this implementation ensures that you and we have some control of it. From our side, there are automated systems that will keep this in check. But also, you have options:

This seems to have mostly gotten favourable responses from what input I've gathered so far. But now finally comes the time for the controversial feature.

Hidden text choices. And do let me explain what they actually entail. Because there are two separate topics here. What is this, and then what is it supposed to be used for. And so far, I've felt people have focused on the former issue to the latter's exclusion. So, firstly, let's just talk about what this is on a purely functional basis. Let's observe this example: 

What we see here poses a bit of an issue. Neither of the answers are correct. But there is actually a third, hidden option. We can mouse over the "two", and it will highlight. It's also possible to conditionally display an icon next to it. Let's take a look at both, so I don't need to put two pictures here:

When inserted into the text, this kind of option has a few unique properties. Firstly, it can only appear on the immediate, freshest text printed on the screen. Clicking any such option will disable all present in the text, and it can be configured with skill checks to display the icon and change the icon being shown too.

So how would this be used in the game?

The intent here is to offer an additional layer of interactivity to social interactions and other scenes. By placing a number of hidden options in the text, we offer the player the opportunity to spot something they feel is worth focusing on. 

Then, the focus grants bonuses and penalties for further actions. This means some hidden options might be purely beneficial and provide you with specific insight into the situation that makes your subsequent actions more efficient, while others might be red herrings, distracting you from the actual issues. Still, other options might offer a tradeoff; focusing on one aspect draws your attention away from another. There could even be options that might just exist to add colour to the interactions.

The options are meant to be something you have to spot (or have it suggested by your skills), and then you need to decide if you want to use any of them because they might not be what you need to succeed.

Ultimately I think the best I can do is amend the current intro to use these mechanics and give it to people to see how they find them to work in practice. But still, I've already been offered some suggestions pre-implementation and would like to see what other people think about it.