Alright, seeing that this directly affects the content one playthrough will be able to access, it's time to start voting on how branching we want the chat scenarios to be. As always, some explanations on backend design before we can start voting:
As it currently stands, girls 1 - 3 have a decent amount of branching while girls 4 - 6 have fairly little (as of right now). Let's dissect the one with the most branching and see if this is what we want from the other girls as well: Lydia. This will contain slight spoilers for her story paths.
Lydia has a lot of scenes which are only accessible by making certain choices. The easiest to explain is her acting chain: if the player pushes Lydia to get detention, she will be assigned to participate in an acting audition (which I'm sure most of you unlocked). Depending on how well you do and how much you push her into pursuing the acting, she will either:
Ditch that assignment and masturbate with you instead (her "Wet Actress" chat), giving immediate gratification and ultimately failing her audition.
Leave the conversation, pursue acting and do well in her audition, leading to her "A Star in Porn" chat.
Even though the path is convoluted and the second outcome is rather obscure, the branching here is pretty simple: you either don't have this branch of her story unlocked at all or you are pursuing one of these chats.
Another example is her grandma's birthday party, to which she brings a cake. Depending on your choices, she either brings a burned, self-made cake, a store bought cake or a well-made self-made cake. The last branch of this is again rather obscure and unlikely to be known to many players. So, in this example you ALWAYS pursue one of these branches, but it is split into three paths:
She brings a burned cake, making her grandma very sad which prompts her to make an effort to visit her more often (leading to "Elderly Assistance").
She brings a store bought cake, making her mother very angry and ultimately stop supporting her financially, so she has to come up with a way to make money (leading to "Part Time Parkour").
She brings her own well-made cake, leading to her connecting with her sister again and them planning to go to a bar together (leading to "Double Date?").
Both of these events are coming up in Lydia's story and both of these have chat scenarios which will not be seen in one playthrough. This is great for replayability and making your choices have consequences, and bad for anyone wanting to play through all of the content I produce while tagging along during development. As it is right now, it is not intended to have these branching paths be accessible by ingame codes meaning that much like Aurelia's challenge #2, it is intended for the player to see the chat scenario associated with their choices. I plan on splitting the usual 6 chat update cycle into producing at least 4 chats everyone can access and then 1 - 2 chats locked behind branching decisions.
You probably remember roughly how much you talked with Lydia about whatever path you chose, so keep in mind that branching paths like these also affect many chats during a girl's normal story progression before the associated chat scenario of that branch ever becomes playable.
With this said, the question is: how branching do we want the game to be in the end? Here are the choices:
1. Reduce branching overall
This will lower the amount of chat scenarios you cannot play during a single playthrough. It means that there will be less branching paths overall, with all girls, making them more linear.
2. Stick to what we have
This means that there will be some branching with every girl and some content for each that needs a second playthrough. It's hard to estimate how much branching there currently is, I'd say that about 1 in 3 chats leads to a decision that splits the story into one of at least two paths.
3. Same amount, less branches
This will keep the overall amount of branching we have the same, but will eliminate everything that would branch into three or more branches. This makes it so that a second playthrough can lead to having seen everything.
4. Make them acecessible via codes
As with most votes, this is the reason multiple options are selectable, please only select one of the other three. And then select this one if you really, really want to have these chats be playable by ingame codes. I would very much not like this, as I feel it takes away too much weight from the choices you are making, but if EVERYONE wants this, I will think about it again.
I will not add an option to increase branching, since what I'm currently producing is around the maximum I can wrap my head around. I can't forget that I still have to write the chats too. Already, I'd say on average around 20% - 30% of each chat scenario is never seen by the player due to the choices they made.
As mentioned before, there will be a bit of voting in the coming weeks, more so on a girl's direction or her kinks. But it's important we do this vote first, as it is vital for me to plan ahead and see what you guys prefer.
Voting ends July 25. I will not break ties since I take this vote more of a direction vote rather than a set in stone decision.