Coffee is toxic, foul-smelling sludge, the mere smell of which makes me physically queasy.
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I agree but
cappuccino isn’t bad
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Is it even necessary for player character to specify what he likes to drink and eat? I always find it weird when the game asks me if my character is vegan, eats kosher or halal, prefers to drink alcohol, tea, coffee or water - I always filled such gaps in my head with ease and such questions can’t help but break my immersion a bit because they feel so, well, minor in how they affect my character and his behaviour.
Doesn’t help that often such customisation is spread to almost every aspect of your custom character… except their behaviour, where customisation should probably matter the most.
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Apparently, a lot of people are very sensitive about that and more
This 
should be written on a golden plate
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Leaving it open to player interpretation/filling in the gaps is a totally reasonable way of handling it and in many (most?) cases that’ll work fine. The problems arise when someone has happily been filling the gaps and imagining their character as vegetarian and then the character tucks into a steak dinner without their input, which can be a jarring distraction. If there isn’t a choice about which meal to go for, I’d prefer to gloss over what’s being specifically eaten - just writing something like “the banquet has XYZ kinds of food and you all eat your dinner” or “after breakfast, you go to your superhero cave” or something.
I don’t think it’s a necessity exactly - I’m not someone who self-inserts in games so I don’t really mind if my character goes for a meat dish - but it’s a small way of expressing something about your character.
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Same goes for animals or pets. Sure, authors are obviously free to include them in their story. It’s also obviously fine if NPCs react in a way where they go all mushy and doe-eyed when an animal is around. But forcing the player character to react in that way is a hard no.
This also plays into my wider opinion that character customization should matter more, and a big part of that is reactions to situations. Yes, the reaction to fawn over “cuteness” might be common, but having an opposite reaction or a reaction somewhere inbetween outright love and hate can also reveal things about a character.
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I definitely agree that customization should focus on behavior and reactions, not superficial fluff like dietary choices or even excess appearance customization; the only exception is if those choices have a direct impact on the story.
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…even if the story takes place in arctic winter and the MC just needs to keep warm?
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Yup. They (and similar things like soups) cause such a very intense reaction in me irl so, since I self-insert, it’ll really take me out of it. Could be -100 of your degrees of choice and I’d still only take a cold drink, 'cause at least that doesn’t cause me to gag. At least in that case, though, it serves a functional purpose and I’d probably overlook it.
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Ah, I see now. (As someone who’s incapable of drinking cold drinks half the year, I was having a bit difficulties.) In that case the better option would probably be to not drink at all, instead of willingly lowering your body temperature.
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Something I don’t like is the idea of a “secret RO.” Like, what’s the point of making them a secret? What benefit is there to not including them?
I would rather have a “difficult RO.” One where the MC needs to make more of an effort to romance that particular RO. Maybe they only romance a particular kind of character. But that way the reader can at least know that
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I usually manage to get the difficult ROs to fall right into my clutches, so I don’t really know if calling them difficult or challenging would ever work. I reliably romance Hawkins each time I replay Mecha Ace and it isn’t much of a trouble to romance Manerkol, either, so I would not call them difficult.
I’m just waiting for a fantasy game with plant people so I can eat vegetables right in front of them.
I’d rather a ro that seems like one but turns out they’re not.
Hawkins is supposed to be the difficult to but it’s the only the one I can snag
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I don’t self-insert, but have a similar distaste for hot drinks. I have a hot drink maybe twice a decade, and that’s usually because someone either forces it on me while I’m too sick to get up and get my own drink or because my nephew made me a cup of coffee (because if he says it tastes good, I tend to believe him). I’ve never gotten everyone’s thing for hot drinks–I like cold drinks and I fill the cup with ice before I ever pour whatever I’m drinking into the glass. Hell, I even freeze my bottles of water, because refrigerator water just isn’t cold enough.
And the only soups I’ll eat are either cold (fruit “soups”, actually) or cream-based, and there are only a couple of the latter I’ll touch.
So, yeah, I get it. And it’d be nice to give my MCs a cold drink for their choice (iced tea, soda, or even cold brew coffee!) instead of hot drinks (and hot tea makes me gag, so every time I see that, I shudder).
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Their existence being a plot point?
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But their existence as CHARACTERS tends to not be secret, just their status as ROs.
But it could.
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I do agree with the Secret RO thing being a pain but for me, that’s more about ROs you can’t get to unless you’ve completed the game on a first playthrough a certain way. I suppose that’s more for VNs than for CoG stuff though. That being said… Amnesia Memories and the Stockholm Syndrome route that you need to get a good ending in order to unlock the final story will always be stuck in my head (god, that route was so squicky).
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The secret RO thing is interesting, I was wondering about it recently and came to the conclusion that there are a few different potential purposes:
- flagging to players in advance that there is a less accessible romance route or one with a very different structure to the others - eg a secret RO as a “villain” romance
- keeping plot elements under wraps for later reveals - eg a secret RO is a ghost, but the MC/players don’t know ghosts exist in the setting until some way through the story
- wanting to keep some character elements hidden while a project is in progress - to help it feel fresh when players encounter it, or to build hype/excitement about a particular character or route, or whatever other reason
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All of these really, I don’t get the complaint here - what’s wrong with keeping some things under the spoiler bar?
I’m actually in favour of every RO being secret until you discover it in-game but in today’s saturated market, it’s probably better to announce who the ROs are. Romance is a major draw to the audience.
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