The first is that I know where Harlow's story is going. You can have your opinions on her. You can say what you think she should do. You can say what you think the MC should do. Your opinions and thoughts are fine. But I'm the only person who actually knows Harlow. I know her backstory. I know what makes her tick. I know her complete personality. I know why she is the way she is. I know her family. I know her friends. I know what she was like in high school. I know what her hopes and dreams are. I know what she wants. I know how her story is going to play out. I know how everything comes together. It's been in place since Episode 1. I know exactly who she is. And I'm the only person who knows this. Nobody else does. It's in my head and I think about it every time I'm writing and rendering a scene with her in it.
Yes, but maybe there are players (the people you are doing the game for), that don't like where Harlow´s story is going. Because where Harlow´s story is going, seems to be a really sordid place.
I´m here in this thread only for a couple of days, but yourself admit that Harlow´s character is getting a lot of criticism.
People out there is EAGER to find games even remotely similar to Being a DIK, since that game has been such a great success. Even a really bad game as "College Kings" is making a lot of money because, at least at first, seemed similar to BaDIK. This one is better (at least is not a bunch of disconnected scenes) but it´s not having a big success after 5 episodes. Maybe you are doing something wrong. And Maybe it´s that your characters are not relatable enough.
The girl with the sunglasses (sorry, I forgot the names of all the characters except Harlow) has the personality of the male protagonist of a bad "macho" movie of the 80´s: sunglasses even indoor
, expressionless, rude with others, "I don´t take shit, I don´t give a damn" attitude... She´s not an "ice queen" character that the player would like to "melt" with his charm, is just an unpleasant character to avoid. If she would know martial arts, she could be Steven Seagal.
The crush of the MC is not relatable either. She´s focused in business and his scenes are not cute, nor funny, nor sexy.
The older stripper is just a conventional character. The hot woman that have sex with the MC at the first encounter because a porn game has to have some sexual scenes. Her story and personality is not interesting either. There are characters like her in most porn games.
The dean is OK, although most of the scenes are, again, business focused. The conversations in his office are mostly boring. Well, it seems that there can be something more after the MC and her dance together, but that´s all. Also, we don´t know a lot about her either. Is not a relatable character so far, although she has potential.
The Asian girl is OK too, although the story of the clandestine fights is way to far fetched for me. You don´t learn boxing online. You learn boxing by boxing with other people in a gym. That thing of the MC kicking asses of street fighters in clandestine competitions... Not credible. It seems to me that, since BaDIK has fights, this game has to have fights too. And the girl is too shady to be a really relatable character. It´s a character to have fun with and forget, but not the "main Li".
And there is Harlow. The pretty, funny and a bit awkward but charming girl-next-door. The girl that can be at the same time a buddy and a girlfriend. A true RELATABLE character. The kind of girl most guys would like to know and fall for. And you are ruining her with a sordid development of her character with that thing of the strip club, pointing to a path of "lesbian sharing" with her, and all that stupidity of the "scientific experiment". Seriously, it´s like if Harlow were an engineering student and want to make her thesis project about... the wheel. Don´t you think that things like sexual arousing or satisfaction after a good meal, are more than studied already by the medical science? And a scientific experiment like that one is not carried like she and the MC do. It´s absurd. And she´s half of the game talking again and again about "the experiment" in a lot of unrealistic and boring conversations with the MC.
Last, the MC is a blunt character. It´s supposed that he has spent the last few years by working, studying at home, and learning boxing, again at home. He has spend his youth almost like some kind of a cloistered monk. Why such an uninteresting background? Has he had girlfriends? Has any experience with girls, or is he virgin? How he knows how to be "the white knight", "the clown" or "the smooth operator" if he has been almost secluded for most of his youth, his only contact with other people being serving them coffee?
The MC doesn´t have an attractive personality. I don´t feel attached to him, and I´m playing like him. He only let the girls drag him from one situation to another, like a log floating in the sea, without taking any interesting initiative on his own... Zero real personality. And, to make it worse, the choices of conversation (and I suppose the "diplomatic" and "aggressive" actions) actually don´t have any meaning, don´t change his personality and you don´t get a different outcome from the girls, except different lines of dialogue...
Sorry if I´m too direct, but English is not my native language and I don´t know how to be diplomatic. It´s easier for me to say the things clearly.
