Persona is a psychopath simulator>gameplay revolves around getting close to people strictly in order to benefit yourself>you tell them exactly what you think they want to hear in order to get them to trust you more>once you've taken everything you can from them, you cut them out of your life completely and never speak to them again
What're you talking about? Persona 5 is a dating sim for Kawakami.
There's a transactional element to it but you don't really get max level in friendship unless you get to know them fully and basically fix their entire lives.
>>4121759Not OP but the stupid points system means that the MC will act one way towards one person and then act literally the opposite way towards someone else since you're forced to play optimally to reduce time wasters like holdovers if you want to max everyone out. Like you can play P4 and act like a super kind caring young man to Ayane and then in the same playthrough you're basically agreeing with Adachi that people suck and living in the boonies sucks and then in another you're going "eh, it's not that bad." It very much does make the MC look like a manipulative cunt who just says whatever the person he's talking to wants to hear.They need to get rid of points entirely and just have it so that every rank requires X amount of visits depending on how major of a jump it is i.e. one for most ranks and two for rank 5/rank9. There also needs to be more hangouts, inviting characters to do side activities and if you're in a relationship actual fucking dates where they let you do a couple of things on it an choose dialogue.
>>4121673That sounds like a lot of visual novels actually. A lot of times you stop talking to the other girls when you ended up with someone else.Even a chill game like Stardew Valley is pretty much maxing their hearts and then they never go down even if you stop talking to them for a decade. And you could still expect a gift from one of them every not-christmas.
>>4122122Metaphor has you rank up every time you spend time with someone. There's still answers that they prefer and there's benefits to giving them those answers, but it doesn't affect your ranking up.
>>4122143That's just an issue of scale and abstraction. A narrative game can't have the meaningless small talk that makes up social interaction unless it wants to be like Oblivion, which sucked for it because of a lack of content. As a game it must advance its state forward somehow, and as a friendship simulator it quantifies that state by points and mots justes. You have to imagine the other conversations happening, especially so in Stardew because you spend almost all your time mining an imaginary substance in a desert cave.
>>4122189I've avoided Metaphor because the idea of Nusona but in a fantasy setting doesn't sound appealing at all but that seems like the best way to do it since it means your Gary Stu MC can have a more consistent personality rather than, as OP said, a psychopath.
>>4123276While it just concept art, I do wish Metaphor was closer to resembling picrel in the final project.
