I would agree with you that some games that offer multiple paths/ branches end up falling away towards the as you mentioned you might get taken off the patch you want to be on or and this this probably annoys me more you remain on the path you want but end up with an incredibly lackluster ending that feels rushed with no actual thought put in it as the focus was more on other paths
Now with that being said if you where considering choices/paths I would just keep it simple and have it as a good ending and a bad ending so only two potential outcomes and given the sheer amount of theories posted if you tried to please them all where do you stop, so that would be my suggestion if you where genuinely considering offering a choice
The following are my personal thoughts on what guides me. I realize I am in the minority.
The only place I see multiple paths working is in a harem story and the player can chose to fuck/not fuck certain love interests based on personal preference. Beyond that I do not get the appeal. I find them distracting, emersion breaking, and unnecessary. I guess I just don't 'put myself' in the shoes of the MC. I'd rather just observe it like I would watching a movie. In fact I tend not to play POV style games where you view the world only from the MC's eyes. If there is a walkthrough mod I use it because I don't want to replay something 15 times trying to russian roulette the right combination to see an event. I stopped playing one particularly long game because I was really just interest in content with 'Jill', but, even with a mod, I fell off her optimal path and I wasn't going to restart that long ass game to try get better story with her. There is another epically long blue ball game that throws up a choice box every 4 fucking frames. FFS, we all want the corruption path... why bother putting up the 'loving wife' choice at all!? (sry... rant over).
In my story there simply isn't a way to add paths that wouldn't derail the track I've put it on. The only thing I could do is maybe let the player chose between a couple outfits or maybe add more views/animations to sex scenes and allow the player to select the one he wants. But even that requires a lot of work that takes away from other scenes or maybe cause me to simply remove some scenes. For example, in the next update there is a transition scene that connects two events at two different locations. It has 200lines of code, 53 renders, and a 600 frame animated camera pull. Would the story work without it? Yes. But now I have a beautiful transition scene that ties the other two together and sets a mood for what's about to happen.
Even for a professional production team, multiple branches are simply a money grab. This is fine because they are making a product and selling it to support themselves, but their goal is not to tell a compelling story from start to finish. Their goal is to get subscribers and keep them as long as possible. That's done by appealing to as large an audience as possible and dragging out the game as long as possible. For AVNs, I think it's okay to have a small side story or the occasional gratuitous scene just for the sake of entertainment, a time out from a serious plot, but some games just jump from one random even to another.
As far as endings go, I think the ending is the most important part of the story. Again, some games just jump from random event to random event and then BAM... here's a random, rushed ending, if they ever get to one. My story is narrowly focused to a specific end. My production goal originally was to create short stories. Just a couple hours long, published as completed/final projects because I hate 5+ year games that never end. My first (unpublished) game is just that. 1.5-2hrs long with the ending guiding the story. I wish more publishes would do something like that but again, you can't make money that way. MHB became much larger than I planned but I think it's length is needed to properly tell the story. It's not long just for the sake of being long. Long being a relative term here, I realize some games could be called epically long.
As far a adding multiple ending to MHB... no, sorry, not going to happen. Again, in a harem game, maybe different endings depending on which love interest wins the MC is okay, but just think about the work creating 5 mediocare endings versus one grand ending. For MHB, sure I could have one 'bad' ending and one 'good' ending but that just makes entire previous 10hrs of content irrelevant because the player picks the ending from a menu. The emotional investment is shattered when that options box pops up.
I think players are just programmed to expect choices and multiple ending because that's all they know. Because nearly all creators want to make money and again, that's how they do it. Maybe they'd enjoy my style more if it was more common. I personally have really been drawn to the 'comic book' style VN's because they do not have choices but I dislike the chat bubble renders. Which brings me all the way back to why I'm making this. It's because this is the style of 'game' I want to play and no one else is making one. And to be clear, because I make this for myself and I am not monetizing it, I am not influenced by consumer desire. Constructive feedback is fine, like bug reports or some people have suggested more sound effects, but my 'vision' overall is what it is. The veterans who have been here from the start know this, just letting some of the newer participants know.
Sorry for the rant but this topic gnaws at me. I try to stay out of this thread as I see it as a place for you guys, not me. Plus I have over two hundred followers now and I don't want to bother them with notifications about trivial stuff.
I'll make an update post in a week or two but short version is things are going as planned. Thanks.
