I have decided that I’m going to put friendship points in my game, probably hidden, just saw that I have a system of judging who the MC is best friend, who is different than the romance option, would be. Only problem is I’m not entirely sure what should have friendship points, and what shouldn’t.
Granted, right now I’m dealing with more separate scenes, MC, and romance options alone. Part of me wants to just put friendship points everywhere are not flirt points, so essentially every interaction that isn’t hostile, but I’m not sure. Thoughts? Advice? Opinions?
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i’m dealing with a character i have various different hidden stats for and what i’m doing is making the main bar the tolerance bar, which is affected by decisions that the MC makes that the character is amused by/respects, but a different stat called trust that only goes up whenever they or the MC share prominent backstory with each other or the two of them have a ‘moment’ where they’re actually on the same page and actually being open with each other. it’s complicated, but for example,
character a tells character b something about their childhood, trust goes up.
character a gives character b some friendly advice and character b takes it, but it’s a pretty transactional moment, so relationship/tolerance goes up but trust does not.
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Yeah definitely do-able 
Exclude or remove points for being hostile, nothing for neutral reactions, various amounts of points for how nice you are to them or what sort of things you go out of your way to help them with (excluding RO type answers.) Basically anything you’d normally do if interacting with a friend in RL.
So say the character says hi to you, if you brush past them rudely remove 2 FP, if you nod briefly and then keep going 0 FP, if you say Hi back 1 FP, if you walk over smile and ask them how their day has been 3 FP, Respond with a flirty wink 0 FP.
If you need to work out who is the “best friend” at any time, you can test it. (I’ve done this in one of my games I’m writing as well.) The code can be a bit tedious if you have a lot of people though unless anyone has a better way of doing it, but once you’ve written the code once, you can just reuse it.
*if (PersonA_FP > PersonB_FP)
*if (PersonA_FP >= PersonC_FP)
*set bestfriend "PersonA"
*if (PersonA_FP < PersonC_FP)
*set bestfriend "PersonC"
*if (PersonA_FP < PersonB_FP)
*if (PersonB_FP >= PersonC_FP)
*set bestfriend "PersonB"
*if (PersonB_FP < PersonC_FP)
*set bestfriend "PersonC"
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I agree with @Jacic, I usually distribute points based on the MC’s actions as well, taking into account the other character’s personality. I reckon there can be suspenseful events that allow the points to be boosted or dropped significantly depending on the choice. The same goes for choices that do not really have an immediate effect but are followed by repercussions later on.
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Personally I would add a few friendshippoints even for romantic replys, since friendship is not unimportant in a relationship, too
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Or you could have the same relationship stats combined; for example, if the MC doesn’t romance the character, then that person could “love” the MC as a friend without being in love with them romantically.
*if (Cindy = 0)
Cindy wants to Murder you.
*goto Timothy
*elseif (Cindy <= 24)
Cindy Hates you.
*goto Timothy
*elseif (Cindy >= 25) and (Cindy <= 39)
Cindy Dislikes you.
*goto Timothy
*elseif (Cindy >= 40) and (Cindy <= 60)
Cindy is Indifferent towards you.
*goto Timothy
*elseif (Cindy >= 61) and (Cindy <= 75)
Cindy Likes you.
*goto Timothy
*elseif (Cindy >= 76)
Cindy Loves you.
(to work out the best friend here you would just need to
A: Check if the player has them as a romance option
and if not B: check who has the highest score
Friendship points are really useful. But I don’t recommend putting labels from it and address like x is the best friend of the PC.
I can be ultra nice with X to obtain benefits due the character social stand or power or I can simply being nice but I don’t care really about that character to be my bf.
2 Likes
My main WIP has three separate relationship bars each for two major NPCs. The main bar, which appears on the stats screen, is the trust bar. The hidden metrics are friendship and romance. Because it was a major priority for me that friendship would not appear to be a “watered down” variation on romance, sometimes choices that add romance points grant a little less trust than ones that add friendship points. And sometimes not. This is in keeping with, not just the personalities of the NPCs, but the major themes of the game.
Sometimes, people look for different things in friends and romantic partners. Sometimes, the same actions might be interpreted as either romantic or platonic, depending on whether there’s an established flirtation, or romantic interest. It depends on what’s right for your game. Is the romance the main plot, or a side plot? Generally, the more major romance is to the plot, the more different ways to raise romance bars you should have.
3 Likes
Yees. I must admit I do like the idea behind friendship points though. I’ve used it for a different reason, but I really like the idea that if you don’t persue the NPC as a RO they don’t act like one. It frustrates me to tears that so often you can’t easily just be friends with an NPC without them assuming you want them to throw themselves at you. I’d really like to see the option of deeper platonic friendship types rather than NPCs being first and foremost only RO’s.
Most RO’s work off a general relationship bar anyway. No reason why you can’t have both running similtaniously so it doesn’t lock you out of anything if you start it.
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Romance is the main plot. But yeah, you do have a point with that.
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I can understand where you’re coming from. The first half of my book, just because you’re kind of still getting stuff sorted out and figuring out who you like, both the player and the MC, since this is a romance focussed book and at some point you’ll have to choose a romance path, the NPC’s are going to sort of be romantic options as opposed to friends, although even then that can alter, but after that yeah, I’m gonna play around with NPC’s who are fond of the MC, but who aren’t necessarily romantic options. I actually have four distinct people who are specifically not romantic options, that you can friend, though that’s probably going to come up more in book to if Buk One does well.
I’m also doing general relationship stats in my project as well as romantic stats and I personally have just been going based on what a character will like and dislike. Some options have more points, some less and some none because it’s totally possible, just like in real life, to say the wrong thing. So in a sense I think it’s fitting to do the points by degrees based on your characters.
You could also trigger assigning a best friend if their stats are high enough by a deliberate choice by the player. Idk if that would be easier or more complicated depending on your story.
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