0064 | in which I talk/rant about Shall We Date? The Nilfheim events & work on a new project

[straightforwardly]

► Yesterday, I participated in fandomsecrets's Friending Meme XVI, and now I have a few new people on the flist. Welcome! ♥

► Now, onto the main point of this entry. Some of you may remember my talking about Shall We Date? The Nilfheim last December. One of the things I didn't talk about much then were the events.

Essentially, there seems to be three kinds of events in this game. The first is the "collection" events, where you gain something— stars, snowflakes, candy, hearts; it really depends on the event itself— which you then accumulate in order to use them to gain items (and, sometimes, short side-stories). The second is one where you gain a side-story, and you need to play through it by a certain time in order to gain some sort of prize.

The third and last kind is the one which I really want to talk about, since it's the one that I've only seen in this particular game in the Shall We Date? series. I think of them as the "grace point" events.

Basically, in this event, there are a few side-stories which you do not need the usual story tickets to read. They tend to have two endings, the normal ending and the premium ending, and you get prizes based on how many endings you complete during the event period. However, there are checkpoints at various parts in each route, which you would either need a particular item (like with the general routes) or need something that they call "grace points". You gain this points in one of two ways: either by using your training points to raise them instead of the points needed for the general route, or by making "friends" within the context of this event, since you gain 20% of the points earned by any friend. Each time you finish a route, the amount of grace points needed to get through each checkpoint increases.

Still, it's pretty easy to play through all the routes twice before the event ends. However, there is one major issue I have with these events, and that's this: once the event ends, the stories disappear, and it's impossible, as far as I can tell, to read them again. I have a memory like a sieve, so this is really a sour point with me.

For instance, the first time this game had one of these events, it was around the end of December. I played through all the routes, twice, but as of right now, I can only remember the bare minimum about what some of the routes were about. Since I've been becoming increasingly fannish about this game lately (and later events tend to refer to things that happened in prior ones), you can see how this is a problem— especially since I've been considering requesting it for Yuletide or some other exchange more and more. The monetary model is already, in my opinion, a huge roadblock in getting people to play this game, and having whole chunks of the canon being completely unavailable would only make it even harder.

This all leads me to my reason for bringing this up in the first place: the current event, which is called the "Lovesickness Event", which began earlier in February, and ends tomorrow, on 2 March.

This is the second time that I've played through one of these "grace point" events. This time, it had routes for Orlando, Jean, and J.J., and I played them in that order. However, when I was half-way through my first playthrough of J.J.'s route, all those above concerns coalesced into an idea for what should have been an obvious solution:

Why don't I just transcribe the event stories?

That way, I can just reread them whenever I want to refresh my memory on what happened, and, if I post them, I'll be able to direct people that way if I ever convince them to play the game. It's not quite the same as playing it directly— the loss of music to set the tone, and, while I've taken many screenshots, the loss of actually seeing the character's reactions as you read— but it's the closest I can get, and it's definitely better than nothing.

I'm really, really surprised that I didn't think of this earlier, and I really regret that I didn't think of it when that Christmas/New Year event was going on, because I remember Orlando's route in that one had some great Sunny/Isabella scenes. (I did screencap a few moments, but not enough. =/)

So, ever since then, I've been replaying the routes as much as I can, trying to get it all transcribed. J.J's was the easiest— since I was only halfway through my first playthrough, I got the entirety of his route, plus the two endings, transcribed rather quickly.

However, I'm having more troubles with getting Orlando's and Jean's route done. With both routes, I do have the basic route transcribed, as well as the premium ending. However, I don't have the normal ending for either of them transcribed yet, nor do I have the text for all the answer options during the choices yet.

Right now, I'm playing through Orlando's route for what is the fourth time overall, and the second time since I started transcribing. I think I probably can get to his normal ending, but... I'm not so sure I can do the same for Jean's, which is really troubling, especially since I remember that that one had a conversation between Orlando and Isabella that'd be important for a fic-bunny that attacked me last night.

The main reason I'm having this problem? Grace points. The checkpoint requirements have gotten really high, and I'm having quite a bit of trouble meeting them, despite having poured so many items during boost periods in order to raise my grace points. What's even more frustrating is that I'm not sure why the event is programmed to still be raising those requirements. I've played through all the routes and have gotten all the endings already, which means that I've obtained all possible prizes for playing the story. Furthermore, the number of times you play through a route doesn't affect ranking, so there's really no reason to put this restriction in place. All it does is hinder the player's ability to read through the story again. /frustrated.

I have more to say about the story/characters, but this entry's already gotten pretty long, so I'm going to cut it short. Next time, perhaps.