aguy57

Member
Sep 18, 2017
426
1,091
Honestly I feel like they should just minimize the branching and start pushing for maybe 4 or 5 completed paths. Maybe Hire more writers and coders, train a custom AI model and then use some sort of sketch -> AI -> manual fix pipeline.
Because this is actually taking ages.
 

k2ren

Member
Jun 13, 2023
256
879
Honestly I feel like they should just minimize the branching and start pushing for maybe 4 or 5 completed paths. Maybe Hire more writers and coders, train a custom AI model and then use some sort of sketch -> AI -> manual fix pipeline.
Because this is actually taking ages.
dude, that's the point. taking ages and milking all that patreon money. have you checked their patreon page? they get a lot of money from it per month for doing barely anything at a slow enough pace. they will never want this cashcow to end because ppl keep paying them.
 

EvolutionKills

Well-Known Member
Jan 3, 2021
1,302
4,420
Harry Potter is very flawed and all, but it was completed in a reasonable timeframe. One year for the first four books, then 3 years for the largest one and two years for the final ones.

Book 1 97
Book 2 98
Book 3 99
Book 4 00
Book 5 03 (Pregnancy and Warner Bros)
Book 6 05
Book 7 07

Imagine Rowling pulling a Martin and simply not finishing SoIaF. We'd be a book 5 and waiting decades for book 6 and 7, which aren't worked on anymore and at best will be adopted by other writers once Martin dies.

Obviously you can't equalize books written by a single author with videogames done by a few people, but its very clear that SoC development is flawed. 9 Years and we are still finishing up part 1 of 3, with no indication what could happen in the next parts.
So your problem is entirely based on some arbitrary end point for the story. So because SoC hasn't hit this arbitrary end point it is flawed because some other creator in another medium reached their arbitrary endpoint sooner?

The development timeline is quite long, no doubt. But at this point I imagine the problem is the double edged sword that is Patreon. In order to keep their Patrons happy, they probably need to pump out X amount of smut consistently to keep them paying. This would be like racking up a huge pile of credit card debt and then only paying the bare minimum; 5 years later and you're devoting a sizeable chunk of your spendable income just to maintain the debt without even touching the principle in a way that actually diminishes it (e.g. 30 year mortgages are outlawed in most first world nations outside of the US for this very reason). So I can imagine them finding themselves needing to pump out more content, even if that content largely fills things out and eats up most of their time and resources, leaving little at the end of each month to dedicate to pushing things ahead.

Had J.K. Rowling made her living paycheck-to-paycheck off of her Wizarding World work by posting short stories per month, she could have very well also found herself in a position where she was constantly filling in tangents and following up with interesting side characters if doing so is what kept her audience happy and the lights on; progress on the overarching story be damned. So are they 'milking' their Patrons, or are they being backed into a corner by them? I dunno. But given their nearly decade long track record of delivering solid engaging content (again, main overarching story be damned), I am comfortable in saying they aren't scam artists.

Serialized content doesn't need to be your thing, but it's not necessarily a mark against the game or the quality of its current content just because it hasn't reached a (once again) arbitrary self-imposed end point. You're looking at a team slowly treading water successfully and bemoaning that they haven't finished their self imposed race, entirely oblivious to the idea that failing to tread water as a swimmer means you drown.

It also completely misses that the point of the post where you quoted this from; where I was using popular YA literature as an example to lambast someone who was trying to move the goal post and argue the game fell into their subjective definition of 'bad' because being solid or competent wasn't good enough for their taste.
 

EvolutionKills

Well-Known Member
Jan 3, 2021
1,302
4,420
Not what I asked, but thanks for that. I guess I was expecting too much to get a decent answer.
Want a better answer? Maybe don't signpost 'content I hate' on your signature in a game that is built almost entirely around content on said list? I'm not sure why someone who feels compelled to signpost their no-no tags publicly is getting uppity that they didn't get an in depth answer. I mean, c'mon, you are holding up a sign for everyone to see that says 'I am incurious' and then respond with the sad Pikachu face when you're treated as being incurious.
 

EvolutionKills

Well-Known Member
Jan 3, 2021
1,302
4,420
No, I'm saying just because A Song of Ice and Fire is well-written doesn't mean readers can't complain about it taking 14+ years for The Winds of Winter.



I'm also saying that this is a subjective standard. For you, hitting basic English creative writing skills is the competency level within visual novels that deems them 'not bad'. You might as well be saying that it objectively jumped this bar, when you're the one that set that bar low enough for it to cross.

It's nothing to do with sophistication though. It's better than a lot of games, but people who say 'well, it's better than most games so that's good enough for me' are still being affected by bias. The games they've played that have let them down has effected them to the degree that they'll now accept something that does the basics as being 'not bad'. Other people haven't had that experience, but you're unfairly labelling the latter as subjective and the former as unbiased.
You're proving my point yet again. The person who shit-talks competence because it isn't mastery is being biased. Everyone has biases, but good critique is knowing when to set them aside and how. You are still conflating 'competent' as 'bad', and that is a bias you seem unable to move past.

So again, my original point that you cannot unbiasedly call the content 'bad' holds true; because it's only 'bad' if you move the goalpost of what 'bad' is to include things that are demonstrably and definitionally not 'bad'.
 
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ChubbyFatBoy

Member
Aug 19, 2024
331
1,545
aren't y'all tired of complaining about all the same issues every time?? I am not saying one shouldn't complain, but I've read the EXACT same rants 10,000 times at this point: yes, the game is taking ages; yes it's just the first act; yes they made quite a mess in development during the first years; yes, the MC is relatively powerless and humiliated, especially at the beginning; yes, they removed quite a lot stuff (not willingly); and I'm not even discussing personal preferences not fitting the game tags. Etc etc.
After a while, just accept it and move on.
......then stop reading it? You tell people to move on. Yet admit to reading the same complaints you apparently are tired of seeing, over and over. What's stopping you from sampling your own solution and moving on? I mean maybe it's just me who does this. I don't know. But when I eventually come back to check on a game. See nothing happening and don't care for the topic at hand. I just leave, instead of jumping in to complain about complaints. But again, maybe that's just me. Maybe I'M the weird one for doing something like that :unsure:.

On top of that, can you definitely say that those complaining now. Are the exact same folks who been doing it the whole time? Are none of these newer folks bringing it up? Can they not be afforded the same grace. Just because others moaned about it before? Just because the topic has been beat to death. Doesn't mean it's always the same folks holding the whoopin stick.
 

anon6076

Member
Nov 24, 2018
293
614
So your problem is entirely based on some arbitrary end point for the story. So because SoC hasn't hit this arbitrary end point it is flawed because some other creator in another medium reached their arbitrary endpoint sooner?
Finishing story is not an 'arbitrary'.

At this point of state SoC is not even a game, it is a gallery with short erotic stories. Nice gallery though. But where do we even start goblins story line? I dont remember.
 

Gicoo

Well-Known Member
Feb 18, 2018
1,591
4,299
Ultimatively, updates need to be not only regulary, but substantial. Just as Harry Potter geot one book every 1-2 years, One Piece gets a chapter every 1-2 weeks. The difference is that their stories go onward, characters develop and progress, personal and overarching goals are reached. The last important event in SoC was the conquest of Astarte and thats how many years ago and is still getting minor scenes?

I could trust the developers of Harry Potter, One Piece for their professionalism and reliability and I'd like to name some developers and porn games here on F95 who I also expect to finish, but these mentionings get often deleted. I don't trust this developer to finish this game and continue with part 2 and 3. I have the large impression that the works conclusion is not their priority, rather that they purposely stretch it out with secondary or tertiary content that shouldn't be prioritized. Either because its more profitable and very likely because its more feasible, because who knows if they have proper plans for part 2 and 3 and/or can expand on beyond whats established.

This accusation of milking that your original post questioned will appear with almost every update every two months, as long as the updates are still not progressing the main story significantly. People like to vent and articulate their frustration with the game, because it has the great potential unique strengths that could been utilized well. Alas...
 

JoeSte91

Member
Apr 12, 2018
252
475
You're proving my point yet again. The person who shit-talks competence because it isn't mastery is being biased. Everyone has biases, but good critique is knowing when to set them aside and how. You are still conflating 'competent' as 'bad', and that is a bias you seem unable to move past.

So again, my original point that you cannot unbiasedly call the content 'bad' holds true; because it's only 'bad' if you move the goalpost of what 'bad' is to include things that are demonstrably and definitionally not 'bad'.
What are you talking about? It's your definition of bad that I'm working with. I just pointed it out that the level of creative writing you're talking about it entry level stuff like characters with motivations and clear English language skills.

My response has been that 1- that's a low bar to clear, 2- it's your choice to place the bar that low, and 3- that it clears the low bar you've set shouldn't prohibit people from behind upset about the long development time.

There are many shades of grey between competency and mastery. However, I've never demanded a masterpiece. Only that your subjective standard allowing you to accept that the developer is delivering 'good quality content', and therefore permitting the long development time doesn't mean everyone should accept that as the measure, or that they're wrong to do so.
 

Usex809

Member
Mar 25, 2023
184
186
The writing in this is fantastic, it makes me FEEL things - unlike most other works.

That said, I still really wanna butcher every person in this game.

Its been a while since ive played, i wonder if theres a chance of going full nuclear and killing everyone (including alexia~), the psycho ending, going full edgelord.

Not counting the ntr, i just cant forgive being enslaved by these red and purple twats.
Yeah game would have been much better if atleast one of them were truly dangerous and intelligent. Like, in Hero Party must fall Mars is really good in doing his things and even when he is doing NTR he is doing it methodically and clinically without using his powers. My biggest problem with Andras NTR is that he is just a brute with power, he is lame because he is just too damn general as you can find his character in almost every NTR hentai and this type of character was not required in story rich game like this, we needed more complex big bad.
 

EvolutionKills

Well-Known Member
Jan 3, 2021
1,302
4,420
What are you talking about? It's your definition of bad that I'm working with. I just pointed it out that the level of creative writing you're talking about it entry level stuff like characters with motivations and clear English language skills.

My response has been that 1- that's a low bar to clear, 2- it's your choice to place the bar that low, and 3- that it clears the low bar you've set shouldn't prohibit people from behind upset about the long development time.

There are many shades of grey between competency and mastery. However, I've never demanded a masterpiece. Only that your subjective standard allowing you to accept that the developer is delivering 'good quality content', and therefore permitting the long development time doesn't mean everyone should accept that as the measure, or that they're wrong to do so.
Sweet holy hell my dude. Being upset that the game is long in development is NOT the fucking same things as saying the content that is already there is 'bad'. My original point, the one you've been entirely missing the goddamn point of, is that you cannot unbiasedly call the content itself 'bad'. You insist on taking your standard, which appears to be the game is bad because of the long development time, and failing miserably to equate that with the point I was making. Being upset at the long dev time is an ENTIRELY separate topic, divorced from the subjects of art or writing critique. Yeah, the game has been in development a long time. You know what that means? There is a metric fuck-ton of content, as one would expect from team that has been working and putting out solid content uninterrupted for such a long amount of time. Congrats, we have now discovered how to account for the variable of TIME in our collective assessment.

This isn't Duke Nukem Forever, a game with a long troubled development cycle that ultimately released a half-baked amalgamation of a decades worth of trend-chasing design tropes. DNF isn't a bad game because it was in development hell for 12 years; it would still be a 'bad' game on its own merits even if the end product had only been made in the more typical 2~3 year long dev cycle. You can remove DNF from the drama of its history, assess the game for what it was (rather than what over a decade of hype demanded it to be), and still make a very strong case that the end product is not good.

To be unbiased, you need to be able to separate your assessment of the quality of the content that is there from your obvious disappointment that it isn't the end of the story you want to see. You keep failing to do that, and thus you keep proving my point. You haven't posited that the content is 'bad' because it fails at characterization, or the dialogue is wooden, or the prose is uninteresting, or the art botches the perspective or fails to keep characters looking consistent, or literally any other failing on the part of the authors and artists; your only assessment is that the content is 'bad' because it's not the content you personally want to see after all this time. The writing and art didn't magically get worse because the game has been in development for 9 years. But according to your logic, they somehow have. As if content somehow spoils like milk left out on the counter too long...
 

JoeSte91

Member
Apr 12, 2018
252
475
Sweet holy hell my dude. Being upset that the game is long in development is NOT the fucking same things as saying the content that is already there is 'bad'. My original point, the one you've been entirely missing the goddamn point of, is that you cannot unbiasedly call the content itself 'bad'. You insist on taking your standard, which appears to be the game is bad because of the long development time, and failing miserably to equate that with the point I was making. Being upset at the long dev time is an ENTIRELY separate topic, divorced from the subjects of art or writing critique. Yeah, the game has been in development a long time. You know what that means? There is a metric fuck-ton of content, as one would expect from team that has been working and putting out solid content uninterrupted for such a long amount of time. Congrats, we have now discovered how to account for the variable of TIME in our collective assessment.

This isn't Duke Nukem Forever, a game with a long troubled development cycle that ultimately released a half-baked amalgamation of a decades worth of trend-chasing design tropes. DNF isn't a bad game because it was in development hell for 12 years; it would still be a 'bad' game on its own merits even if the end product had only been made in the more typical 2~3 year long dev cycle. You can remove DNF from the drama of its history, assess the game for what it was (rather than what over a decade of hype demanded it to be), and still make a very strong case that the end product is not good.
>Conversation about SoC using long development to milk patreons.

>You said ' Now it's up to each person individually to determine whether or not that's an adequate trade off, but seeing as how the devs are still going strong it seems to be working out for them and their paying audience at least' in regards to the NSFW parts holding the story together.

> I responded ' Just because they're getting paid doesn't mean they're producing quality'.

The conversation has always been about the quality vis a vie the development. We've just been trying to establish what 'quality' means for you, since you said an unbiased eye couldn't consider the work 'bad'. But when I queried the unbiased part, you described a very basic understanding of creative writing.

It doesn't matter how good the current content is, if none of it is forward facing towards the development and the storyline has made barely any movement in the meantime. George R R Martin has continued to create a metric ton of Westeros fiction, companion series, blog posts, but do you know what we still don't have? The Winds of Winter.

your only assessment is that the content is 'bad' because it's not the content you personally want to see after all this time
I have never said this. You keep saying that this is my argument, because it's the point you want to contend, but I have never said that. What I said that just because SoC clears the bar of the bare minimum that you personally have set before it doesn't mean other players should accept slow or unfocused development.
 

Ashkia

Newbie
Sep 24, 2022
29
10
We'll get there eventually.
I am getting this error.The Mercenary Contracts research completed but not finished in the next week.Every start of the new week this error appears.I can 't do any other research in the library its stuck like this. Adsız.png
 
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