I would say I wouldn’t be that harsh with my rival but then I remember my rivals in Harvest Moon and how much I hated them and they were usually the nicest girls lol
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I’d be up for it, partly because it would be something really different/unique! There’s enough stuff out there where everyone just wants the main character, I’d be so down to see something done outside that range and curious as to how it was handled. But honestly anything that takes the MC further from blank slate of perfection is something I am so here for.
I would probably have a hard time being mean to the rival though and would likely do the honourable step aside thing, lol. or end up setting everybody else up in a matchmaking thing but being lonely myself at the end.
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Hmmm. I’d rather have a poly route OR just a subplot about the NPCs’ romance with each other rather than one of them being a rival, especially if the RO is attracted to said NPC to begin with and the MC just…butts in to get whoever they want. I guess it’s because I hate the idea of romance being a competition or a race where you have to ‘win’ before someone else does. Would rather read something that’s just about people falling in love with each other.
(For that matter, kinda related : I also don’t like romances where the main focus is on ‘convincing the NPC to like you’ rather than developing a chemistry between you and the NPC.)
I guess it’d be a great thing for people who like a lower focus on the MC, but for that end of things I’d rather have an NPC-NPC romance subplot.
/personal preferences
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I think I wouldn’t be much interested in a game where you’re in a love triangle and you can’t end up in a relationship. Because a love triangle isn’t a head-to-head contest between two suitors; it’s the RO who decides who they end up with. So once that decision is final I’d want to respect that stop trying to persuade the RO to change it. I’d rather play a game where that’s already been resolved and it starts with me giving a speech at their wedding then continues from there. Because I do not want to play a person who would not give a speech at the wedding.
I actually have played a lot of a game, Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind, where there’s a love triangle in the story that can end that way. It’s actually a pretty big twist, since this game is about being a clan in the Glorantha RPG setting when some idiot has killed the Sun and it turned out you need the Sun (your chief god is Acting Sun now but things are falling apart) and the romance becomes significant for political, cultural, and mystical reasons too complicated to explain. Suffice it to say that the wedding needs to happen so the couple can fight their way through the God War together so two pantheons will team up to bring the Sun back to life. You’re actually abstractly the clan leadership rather than the suitor, but marriage is a bargain between clans, so the romance is out of your hands but you need to make the wedding happen. Which ends up being a pretty big project because you must pay a suitable bride price appropriate for the bride’s abilities and stature. And in this case that is a bunch. 200+ cows (you probably have 600 at this point) the head of an Inhuman King, and magical secrets, plus you need a god to show up and approve of the marriage. There’s three ways I know of that this can play out: it goes off without a hitch aside from a massive attack by several clans trying to disrupt it, they go to the God Wars and come back with a starting bonus for next game, commence victory cinematic; you don’t meet the bride price and the other guy comes back with the head of an Inhuman King and you mend fences then watch his wedding go off without a hitch besides said massive attack and the ending screen notes that your clan eventually gets absorbed into others and forgotten, or you don’t mend fences, everyone in the love triangle winds up dead, and you lose the game
That one is pretty interesting all the way through because the outcome is very much up in the air all along.
Personally I’ve always wanted games to have love nets. Whoever I don’t romance has someone else they romance. Like nine romanceable options if I choose one the other eight pair off.
I wouldn’t be interested in that dynamic. Love triangles tend to annoy me anyway, as there’s always someone who gets hurt and I hate that. I also feel the people in them tend to lack maturity and respect. Seriously, if you realize two people like you the solution doesn’t seem that hard to me:
- You don’t like either of them, so you let them know that ASAP so they can move on.
- You like only one of them, so you let them know that so the one you don’t like gets to move on.
- You love them both, so you let them know that so they can decide whether they want that headache or not, and if they do, you try and find a solution together. Polyamory might be an option. Maybe they all need a break from each other to reevaluate what they really want. Maybe one graciously backs out, maybe the RO just does some soul searching and makes up their damn mind, etc.
If my character were the love rival in a love triangle, I’d probably just have them walk away. I’d feel bad for the rival if my character ”won”, if it were a love triangle where the RO had a hard time deciding, I’d worry about whether their heart was really in the decision and whether they’re going to end up regretting their decision, thus hurting everyone involved. And finally, the love rivals in a love triangle deserve better than to compete for some wishy washy indecisive RO. My character deserves to be the only one their RO loves and wants, as does the rival.
So tldr: love triangles in general aren’t my cup of tea. 
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As long as i can take kill my rival i am ok with it.
Even if it’s just a game, you’d kill someone just for being interested in the same person you have feelings for?
Anyway to answer the OPs question. If the MC gets together with the RO at the end then I’m okay with the competition, but if the MC gets rejected bc RO chooses the rival then I think that’s too realistic for my tastes. That happens easily enough in real life so I’d like to at least in these games for my MC to be happy with her crush.
But then again my opinion might change if it’s really well written.
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I don’t really care for love triangles, since most of the time they’re poorly done. But when executed properly, it really makes me interested. I’m a pretty passive person and it travels along when I make choices, so I don’t really like being forced to do questionable things to make the rival jealous/back off. I tend to back off if the rival is interested, because, hey, who am I to stop them from getting what they want? I usually tend to get more diplomatic if the rival in question is a jerk or will hurt the RO. I think love triangles sometimes become a cheap way to make the rivals become more hated, and it ends up making me just get annoyed. That’s my opinion though
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I generally don’t enjoy being the center of a love triangle in games and interactive fiction because I tend to “choose” an RO pretty fast, so having a continuous fight over me while I’m earnestly trying to only favor one side feels weird and uncomfortable–or like I’m leading the “hanging limb” on, without much agency.
As for being a “competitor” for an RO, I enjoy it only if the rival is an unlikable character already (a jealous ex, an evil villain, or some such). Then it can be kind of fun to compete–a sort of guilt-free way of exploring a soap-opera-type scenario where you can do what you want without consequences.
However, if the rival is a likeable, genuine character who happens to also be in love with the RO, I don’t like it. I feel threatened (like there’s a legitimate chance I could “lose” the RO to the rival) or even like I’m getting in the way of their romance and they deserve each other. (If Alistair and Morrigan in DA:O had gotten along better, say, and weren’t so unpleasant to each other, I would have been much more threatened by one of the endings.)
So yes, jealousy and rivalry can be fun in romantic IF, but only if I genuinely feel like the rival isn’t “better” than the PC somehow (this also limits PC agency, because if the rival is, say, a saint, you presumably are pressured to compete in a way that makes you come off as kind, since your love interest probably won’t find it attractive if you’re outright rude to them).
Edit: I guess what I’m saying is… I only enjoy being a rival in a love triangle if I’m feasibly given a way to be mean to the rival guilt-free, and in a way that doesn’t damage my chances with the RO, lol… 
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Well… i do think that interactive fiction had to be written in a way that the MC " is winning no matter what " in the romance department , else negative critics will be pouring in when MC 's role playing personality does not attract the interest of an RO. Sometimes it does feel a bit unrealistic when all available ROs will abide and accept all type of behaviour of the MC just to ensure everyone could romance such RO… It would be innovative if RO be given a pre-set personality on whether the traits of certain MC be attractive to the RO , example like RO A prefer tough talking , uncompromising MC while RO B is available to soft spoken , kinder MC 
In the case of a love triangle , the possibility of “losing” to another rival will only make the story more intriguing in the sense that MC could pay more attention to the story and invest more emotionally to the characters within …
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I think the Harvest moon method could be interesting. Basically, if you kick your feet and wait around too long, someone else comes in and that RO is off the table. I’m not sure how I would feel about a more direct competition, though.
You meant MC need to commit to the RO or openly inquire the RO about it before someone else do so ?
Would it require an initial courting phase where MC and the RO already be given opportunity to know each other and develop sort of friendship ?
Yep! Like, you start a romantic relationship with them but if you wait too long to make it official then they break things off and start dating the rival. That way you’re not actively fighting over the RO with someone else, but the risk of the rival sort of “taking” them from you is still there.
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I think that is fair … and it prevents MC to take the romantic relationship lightly , as if MC is considering ROs as goods waiting to be pick whenever they feel about it 
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My very broken brain would, knowing that ROs end up with other people without MC intervention, assume that’s who the author really wanted them to end up with because in most games that is who they’d end up with, so I’d never end up pursuing a character with a set “if not fully romanced by x they end up with this person” sort of variable.
I’d find this alright as long as the RO themselves does not express any interest in the rival hahaha, I guess that’s not so much a love triangle or even a rival really…it’s just dealing with a third party nuisance.
Most MC’s I play would never try to get an RO to stop being interested in someone else to be interested in them instead, even if the person was a jerk!
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