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Stories that left you disappointed for a reason

Another thing that annoys me in VNs is the episode by episode or day by day format that a lot of VN devs seems to be doing. Bloodlust exe charging you $14 dollars for the run time of a demo was my tipping point but waiting several months for less than 1 hour of playtime drives me crazy. Especially when I have to pay money for these updates.

That and a VN is in kickstarter/demo stages but all the information the devs seem to be handing out or even care about is physical merch sales. It's the VN equivalent of releasing the first chapter of your IF then opening a patron with nothing but side stories as content with no updates in sight.
 
BiscuitB said:
I know it's a bit of a tangent, but could anyone explain the issues with Errant Kingdom? It's come up a couple of times.

I had purchases WTNC as looking the the review on Errant Kingdom were terrible.
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Ok, so I will try to be brief and not go on an angry tangent lol
Basically:
- Their pervious game was somewhat popular and they capitalised on it promising EK will be bigger, better, more complex. Ran a successful kickstarter for it. Later on they also release a game through steam early access.
- Tried to appeal to many Dragon Age fans, promising not just romance role-play but potential stat\personality-based
- They release what, 1-2 chapters and DECIDE TO SWITCH THE ENGINE (I think that might be a cousin of IF writers going for rewrite tbh because after that ish hit the fan)
- They change the engines and it takes forever. Now they are late on all the promised release dates.
- They declare they will now do chapter-by-chapter releases.
- They miss all the chapter deadlines, too. The art looks rushed.
- They say they will ship the rest of the game in one sitting! No need to wait chapter by chapter, isn't it great? That way they will have more time to polish, yay!
- The final game ends up severely bugged on some routes, contains NUMEROUS noticeable typos and continuity errors, the choices that started off looking somewhat meaningful end up being non-choices, the promised stat system is nowhere to be found, the romances are extremely fast-paced, shallow and cliche, and the CGs look rushed. The main non-romance plot ending that is supposed to be branching makes sense only if you followed a very specific path, otherwise you end up seeing NPCs spawn out of nowhere and info thrown at you with the assumption that you have already read\experienced it (but in truth you did not).
- There is some rather understandable backlash.
- The devs publish a post revealing that they spent all the money halfway and basically can't be bothered. They promise to come back and address all the issues.
- They never come back to the game. It got zero updates.
 
miaomi said:
intro where you're required to pick a guy to romance WITHOUT even having met them in game yet.
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Okay, all your other points nonwithstanding, depending on the version of the demo, they warn that it's not how the game will work and it's for demo purposes. That being said, the writing felt so rushed to me. Which is a bummer because the game is super pretty (and how could it be not, when they have one of the Hades' artists working on art?)
 
yourstalkeroutside said:
That and a VN is in kickstarter/demo stages but all the information the devs seem to be handing out or even care about is physical merch sales. It's the VN equivalent of releasing the first chapter of your IF then opening a patron with nothing but side stories as content with no updates in sight.
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can't believe i came across this tweet which literally encapsulates the cash milking through side stories, that some IFs and VNs do instead of developing the actual story
 

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yourstalkeroutside said:
That and a VN is in kickstarter/demo stages but all the information the devs seem to be handing out or even care about is physical merch sales. It's the VN equivalent of releasing the first chapter of your IF then opening a patron with nothing but side stories as content with no updates in sight.
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That is true, but I do feel like the VN in Kickstarter stage is worse than the IF version, idk why. Like both are terrible, but to me there's more commitment in Kickstarter, if that makes sense.
 
austisicbigboss said:
Not about IF in particular but has anyone noticed that alot of IFS just feel like they're ripping eachother off at this point like every RO feels the same every MC has hardly any actual dialogue options we're just forced to be mean sarcastic or sooo shy and the ones that don't do this never update
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I don't think it's necessarily ripping each other off, I think it's laziness or doing the bare minimum.
 
austisicbigboss said:
Not about IF in particular but has anyone noticed that alot of IFS just feel like they're ripping eachother off at this point like every RO feels the same every MC has hardly any actual dialogue options we're just forced to be mean sarcastic or sooo shy and the ones that don't do this never update
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I think the issue with the current IF pool is that writers don't read in what they'll write abt, nd are just hand selecting certain popular tropes and characters traits based on what they see as favorable as par the one hundred asks some pages keep on answering. i also think that they conflate the story happening to you with u ACTUALLY interacting with the story nd shaping the events nd possessing agency to a certain degree. some MC are straight up narrators and ur only allowed to "react" at the level of emotional aspect.
 
yourstalkeroutside said:
Fixed it.
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the first advice I see actual writers give out to any beginners is to read books that handle the genre or theme or whatever it is they're gonna write abt. this is all done so it can gives u an illustration of how to set the tone nd mood as well as the ability to navigate the topic very well.
idk, i think most of them don't take the writing that seriously which is strange considering the writing process of an IF is ten times harder than writing an actual novel.
 
isahale said:
I mean if you wanted to produce IF's on a professional full time thing you'd also need money, labor is expensive.
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Yeah even if someone is doing the IF completely on their own, they do need to make money somehow if they want to do it full-time. I do think the writers get too bogged down with patreon-locked stuff but I don't think it's necessarily wrong of them to need money to be able to spend more time on what they're doing, it's more of what they do with that time and whether they're actually producing the IF or doing side-stories.
 
isahale said:
I mean if you wanted to produce IF's on a professional full time thing you'd also need money, labor is expensive.
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Grace5963 said:
Yeah even if someone is doing the IF completely on their own, they do need to make money somehow if they want to do it full-time. I do think the writers get too bogged down with patreon-locked stuff but I don't think it's necessarily wrong of them to need money to be able to spend more time on what they're doing, it's more of what they do with that time and whether they're actually producing the IF or doing side-stories.
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I would agree if that was the case in reality it isn't.

We've got "IF Authors" barely with a name to themselves or a story and they instantly go to Patreon. They then fall down the pit of making only Patreon stories and not focusing on the story that made them popular. Months later we're sitting with an author who's too stressed to write the orginial story, too stressed to write patreon.

Fine if you want to become a full time IF author not a problem but work for it, many don't. Many don't actually put out a story and wait for growth. They see authors like The Wayhaven Chronicles, CCHIll, or even the cult like Infamous, and may think "these people barely put anything out, I like writing why not?" Not thinking how much work goes into this.

Just actually produce something first before you want to become the cash cow you aim to be.
 
BiscuitB said:
I would agree if that was the case in reality it isn't.

We've got "IF Authors" barely with a name to themselves or a story and they instantly go to Patreon. They then fall down the pit of making only Patreon stories and not focusing on the story that made them popular. Months later we're sitting with an author who's too stressed to write the orginial story, too stressed to write patreon.

Fine if you want to become a full time IF author not a problem but work for it, many don't. Many don't actually put out a story and wait for growth. They see authors like The Wayhaven Chronicles, CCHIll, or even the cult like Infamous, and may think "these people barely put anything out, I like writing why not?" Not thinking how much work goes into this.

Just actually produce something first before you want to become the cash cow you aim to be.
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Precisely. I don't even think I need to anything to this, since it encapsulates everything perfectly.
Most of them don't know what they want to do with life, which is understandable, but then they decide that they want to be "authors of IFs", which usually crashes and burns, simply because they are in it solely for the money, and not for the love for the craft. And this is not even taking into account that none of them know how much work goes into something like this, even if it's the most linear story one can make
 
austisicbigboss said:
Yeah it's so boring it feels like none of these people actually like writing
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They don't. Most just like to read tik tok slop, and then see all this and think it's aestheticky and easy money
Grace5963 said:
I don't think it's necessarily ripping each other off, I think it's laziness or doing the bare minimum.
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Lack of creativity, and understanding how humans actually function
Mondy said:
I think the issue with the current IF pool is that writers don't read in what they'll write abt, nd are just hand selecting certain popular tropes and characters traits based on what they see as favorable as par the one hundred asks some pages keep on answering. i also think that they conflate the story happening to you with u ACTUALLY interacting with the story nd shaping the events nd possessing agency to a certain degree. some MC are straight up narrators and ur only allowed to "react" at the level of emotional aspect.
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Which is exactly a type of wrong that I'm trying to right with The Dark Crown. I swear, all these games are supposed to have impactful choices that effect the game, but most are just there for the flavour text and nothing else. And if you don't believe me, just look up a literal code for CSide. It, quite literally, has a code that is named " *fake_choice ", meaning it doesn't ****ing matter what you choose, it's just there for some flavour text, maybe, and nothing else
yourstalkeroutside said:
Fixed it.
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They do read, but only the tik tok stuff. And then they think that they are Shakespeare or something
Mondy said:
the first advice I see actual writers give out to any beginners is to read books that handle the genre or theme or whatever it is they're gonna write abt. this is all done so it can gives u an illustration of how to set the tone nd mood as well as the ability to navigate the topic very well.
idk, i think most of them don't take the writing that seriously which is strange considering the writing process of an IF is ten times harder than writing an actual novel.
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You're giving people way too much credit. They don't look that far ahead.
Obviously there are exceptions to this, but for the most part, yeah
yourstalkeroutside said:
Which is why most never finish past the character customization.
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They see that that alone takes days, and it's literally nothing, in terms of content. Or hell, a bunch of them may move past that stage, only to abandon the project, due to them having non existent focus and dedication. I blame technology for this one, but that's just me having my boomer moments
isahale said:
I mean if you wanted to produce IF's on a professional full time thing you'd also need money, labor is expensive.
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VN* Because honestly, creating IFs can be really ****ing easy, unless you want to **** around with the coding aspect of it. But it can be really simple, it's just that it requires a **** load of time, though I do agree, if people want to do that full time, obviously they need to monetize it somehow, so they can earn money from that. Otherwise, they'd have to have a job outside of that, and do that as a hobby or a side hustle
 
LtheStoryteller said:
They do read, but only the tik tok stuff. And then they think that they are Shakespeare or something
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Aw, you think they read that. They listen to summaries of it on Tik Tok or YouTube, maybe skim the description and first few chapters before abandoning it. Call me a boomer but kids these days don't have the attention span to read much less finish a book. Not even the Tik Tok stories (those books can be thick).
 
yourstalkeroutside said:
Aw, you think they read that. They listen to summaries of it on Tik Tok or YouTube, maybe skim the description and first few chapters before abandoning it. Call me a boomer but kids these days don't have the attention span to read much less finish a book. Not even the Tik Tok stories (those books can be thick).
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I mean you're probably right, I can't even lie 😂
 
LtheStoryteller said:
I swear, all these games are supposed to have impactful choices that effect the game, but most are just there for the flavour text and nothing else. And if you don't believe me, just look up a literal code for CSide. It, quite literally, has a code that is named " *fake_choice ", meaning it doesn't ****ing matter what you choose, it's just there for some flavour text, maybe, and nothing else
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I feel like flavour text has it's place, not everything needs to affect the entire game, but like for example, in the games I play, it should matter if I'm snogging someone behind my main partner's back, but it shouldn't matter how I greet a single character the first time I meet them, other than to raise/lower relationship and personality stats, which should matter over time but not from one act alone. both types of choices are important.
 
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