xsssssssss

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Jun 17, 2017
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I also wonder if affinity might be going at some point. MC has said (or thought) that he has been making to many rash decisions and going with the flow to much). I wonder if at a certain point the affinity will be what it is and the decisions get made for you. (Perhaps with Neutral letting you make your own)
I really hope we don't get a point where you no longer get to make decisions.
 
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Holy Bacchus

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Dec 13, 2018
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I rather have a scene that actually happens over one that doesn't.
But what happens in a game of DnG also didn't happen. Did the MC actually bend Sally over and spank her? No. Did the MC sacrifice his actual life to save Jill? No. So if the MC were to again do something similar with a LI in the context of the game, did it actually happen? No.

I suppose it would speak to the irrationality of people's feelings that they would get so worked up over something so small and insignificant, but it still feels like something that could be done better with actual moments and interactions in the everyday world rather than in a fantasy world.

half of the points you have listed are not for all routes, and in any case many of them do not seem particularly important, but that is not the point of the reasoning.

why the relationship, the jealousy between people who already know and interact in reality should develop better through a game of D&G?

Does Jill get more jealous if MC saves Maya from a dragon, than if she sees them hugging around?

to me it seems evident that it is mainly fan service, then certainly something useful to the story will be there
This is primarily my issue with it as well. Regardless of how much time it might take up in the game, it would be better to see characters gaining such feelings of jealousy and suspicion in more everyday moments like Sage seeing him with M&J in the cafeteria, or Josy seeing him in the park with Jill. Having 3 or even 4 LIs playing a fantasy, strategy roleplaying game and getting jealous because the MC chooses to help or save one of the LIs characters in the game seems like a way to force this relationship collision to develop more quickly rather than having it develop more gradually.

Yeah, it's true. I can't unsee that now. I'd prefer if breast physics weren't that weird, clothes being that extra fit to the skin. At least it's not as wierd as Riona's extra nipples :ROFLMAO: .
Not to mention that outfit would be wildly inappropriate for someone who is not only the college librarian but also a teacher. But, this is a game and as such it works by game logic which make her outfit totally OK.

Could this confirm that the DnG game happens IRL and Sage might have a role in it?
Was just thinking that. Looks like if this is indeed going to to be a game of DnG that Sage is also going to get roped into it too and it's probably not going to be a short sequence either.
 
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ChipLecsap

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Aug 4, 2019
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This is primarily my issue with it as well. Regardless of how much time it might take up in the game, it would be better to see characters gaining such feelings of jealousy and suspicion in more everyday moments like Sage seeing him with M&J in the cafeteria, or Josy seeing him in the park with Jill. Having 3 or even 4 LIs playing a fantasy, strategy roleplaying game and getting jealous because the MC chooses to help or save one of the LIs characters in the game seems like a way to force this relationship collision to develop more quickly rather than having it develop more gradually.
it would be really nice if you would hold your judgment at least until we can actually see what is this about. and more importantly how it would be played, out. it could work wonderfully or not, but , I tend to lean to the first option.

it is easily can be a small little feel good event between the characters, with a slight progress with the girls. Jill, did mention the next week, are gonna be rainy days, so may be they are all stuck in the library and play a little fun game, which is also a little awkward do to the fact, that all of the girls are in to the MC

or it can be an actuall crossroad because of the same reasons . :D.
either way , it is look awesome, and the potentials are endless. and just chill a little, stop acting like we're some kind of ENDGAME and we stalking the time , far from it. :LOL:
 

zoyle

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Jan 23, 2019
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I really hope we don't get a point where you no longer get to make decisions.
Sometimes games end up on rails at the end (Acting Lessons is like that), but one thing that I do think will be problematic is that the current system of 'lose a bar from your meter' is not sustainable: if you play a strongly DIK or CHICK character in this game, at the end if Ep 5 you will only have 3 bars left on the other side of the meter.

Currently, there have never been rewards (only penalties) for achieving Massive DIK/CHICK status (such as being unable to see the entire scene with Maya if you leave the party to see her at the end of Ep 2). There have been things unlocked by having Huge DIK status (never Huge CHICK), and a lot of things that have different outcomes for chick/neutral vs dik characters (such as nearly every compliment to Isabella and Jill, which are +relationship for neutral-chick chars and -relationship for dik chars).

I wonder if there will ever be benefits to achieving Massive X status, or if the game will always reward you for taking at least a semi-neutral-ish path and deleting the Massive sections of both bars - there's enough major choices in the game to do that while still establishing an affinity in one direction or the other (eg so you're not neutral affinity).

I also wonder if the optimal outcomes won't involve having made some choices in the other side. As a really straightforward example, I can imagine a CHICK character who rejected Quinn's service being unable to convince Maya that Quinn is prostituting girls out, whereas one who has access to it could do so. It seems to me that Maya is the primary axis of the plot of the game (being involved, like the MC is, with nearly everything, and being the one who is most likely to be put at risk in the future with what's going on with the HOTs), and I think it isn't hard to imagine a situation where getting the best outcome for her involves mixing exactly the right choices.

I like the Maya/Josy relationship quite a bit, but I am probably going to make another endgame save that is a CHICK character who says yes to Quinn just to give myself some backup in case that turns out to be a pivotal decision for saving Maya from Quinn in the future. (I already have a CHICK save that is well-positioned to pursue either Maya/Josy or Jill/Isabella, and a DIK save that is optimized for Sage).
 

Phynix

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Apr 12, 2018
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I suppose it would speak to the irrationality of people's feelings that they would get so worked up over something so small and insignificant, but it still feels like something that could be done better with actual moments and interactions in the everyday world rather than in a fantasy world.
A dream sequence doesn't contain actual moments and interactions either. Your complaint seems to be that one fantasy setting is being picked over the other.
 

flippityflop

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Jun 29, 2020
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I think there are some comparisons in this thread that aren't really fair. Erotic games content is not mass market - it's almost the exact opposite of that. Premium products (and it's hard to describe DPC's work, which is some of the best in the genre, as anything else) in a niche industry are always going to be more expensive.

Running a business is expensive. And hiring help isn't as simple as you might make it out to be. I am a programmer myself, and I have at times considered dabbling in creating or modding games as a way of developing my skills (for example, python is not currently a language I have any work in, so I could develop some python skills by working on a ren.py game). But there's a big problem with doing that: Most programming work is open source, and the way you demonstrate your abilities to employers is to let them look at your actual code.

You can't do that with adult games content; the games aren't open source to begin with, and "here's an XXX rated game I worked on" is not really a conversation you can have when interviewing for a conventional job. That makes it a lot harder for either DPC or someone he hired to commit: No matter how good a creator or programmer DPC is, it's going to be hard for him to move into another industry if this doesn't work out, and it's going to be hard for him to hire someone at a market rate when they're producing work they can't really put on their resume - he's gonna have to pay a premium for that.

It's just a thing you have to accept that if you're consuming this kind of product, and frankly especially if you're doing so in a world where something like F95zone exists so people who want to not pay for your content WILL be able to get it for free - if you want to support it, you're gonna pay more than you do for a commercial title, and you're doing so explicitly in order to keep that work in production.

Now, maybe DPC could find someone more easily now, when people might be willing to take more adventrous employment choices in a US economy that's dealing with significant contraction, but it remains the case that you're going to have some vision-sharing issues, and that a great creator is not necessarily a great manager, leader or communicator. It's DPC's product, and there's no requirement that someone working with him agrees with his choices, but being able to communicate with subordinate programmers and give them feedback on what you do and don't like about their code is a skill, and it's not one all programmers have - many experienced programmers pass on leadership roles to remain senior developers explicitly to avoid having those kinds of responsibilities, and others get jammed into those roles due to lack of interest and do a shitty job and alienate members of their teams.

To be honest, it's hard to blame someone who is financially dependent in not only the short but the long term on their products success having some resentment and unhappiness with a website that freely pirates the shit out of their content. That anyone can come here and get his work (and, indeed, will probably be able to get his new update as soon as he releases it to his top-level patrons, much less the general release) for free is a real threat to his long-term economic stability, and he's taken an enormous personal risk by committing to this, because he'll have to explain the gap in his resume even if he doesn't choose to share the work with a future employer if he ever gives up (and, probably, in order to demonstrate his skills he will have to find someone willing to look at his work on adult content, which will significantly limit his options, probably to within the games industry generally; you're not gonna be able to show the codebase of Being a DIK to Amazon or Google and get a job there! They couldn't even review and discuss your work among the hiring group w/o violating company policies!)

If you enjoy this game (or any game, but especially the ones from the best creators who are doing this as their full-time jobs), you should probably whine less and be more appreciative that the creator has taken a rather significant risk in their personal life by making a commitment to making content you like.
As far as I know, many people on this forum have previously supported DPC on patreon, or are still supporting him.
Speaking for myself, I already bought Being a DIK on Steam and I'm positive I'll buy Season 2 as soon as it becomes available.
As much as I wish I could support DPC on his patreon as well, that unfortunately is no longer an option for me. I'm a freelance artist and this global scale situation we currently find ourselves in has made my future look a bit uncertain.

A lot of people have a "try before you buy" kind of mentality when it comes to games, especially when it comes to adult games. And for a good reason.
I mean, how many projects are constantly being abandoned without even leaving the alpha stage? It really shouldn't come as a surprise that many people are just wary.

I'm not gonna delve into the "how piracy is sometimes beneficial in the long run" topic. I'm not very well informed when it comes to that subject, but from what I've heard, F95 has been a good source of exposure for DPC and his games.

No, he doesn't owe anyone on this forum any kind of respect or gratitude, it's definitely the other way around and I only hope he knows that.
 

crabsinthekitchen

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Apr 28, 2020
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You can't do that with adult games content; the games aren't open source to begin with, and "here's an XXX rated game I worked on" is not really a conversation you can have when interviewing for a conventional job
You do have points about special skills required to manage someone else's work that I agree with. But I don't really see a problem for putting it on your resume. If you don't want to mention you worked on a XXX game you can just say you worked as an independent contractor for a game development studio developing games in Python and then move onto technology details
 

zoyle

Member
Jan 23, 2019
155
165
it would be really nice if you would hold your judgment at least until we can actually see what is this about. and more importantly how it would be played, out. it could work wonderfully or not, but i tend to lean to the first option.

it is easily can be a small little feel good event between the characters, with a slight progress with the girls. Jill, did mention the next week, are gonna be rainy days, so may be the all stuck in the library and play a little fun game, who also worked do to the fact, that all of the girls are in to the MC

or it can be an actually crossroad because of the same reasons . :D.
either way , it is look awesome, and the potentials are endless. and just chill a little, stop acting like we're some kind of ENDGAME and we stalking the time , far from it. :LOL:
I think another thing people kind of overlook when talking about down-the-road conflict is that, especially if you are on a CHICK route where Jill, Maya, Josy etc are all interested, and you pursue all of them, even in Ep 5, all of those characters are rather directly communicating that they know and/or expect the MC will date others. Maya/Josy make it clear they should 'move slow' emotionally, and even if that isn't what actually happens, I think it's doubtful the MC will be penalized for their choices made prior to starting to get signs girls are interested in exclusivity. The MC can even tell Jill they're dating other people, to which she'll be like 'well no shit, we've been on one date'. That Josy/Jill have been placed sharing a class is almost certainly an axis of future decision points (where it would be impossible to believe that the MC could get away with cheating on one with the other).

In fact, I kind of expect it'll be the opposite: I would bet that the MC will face more consequences (or at least sooner consequences) from crossing the streams of girls who prefer a DIK character and girls who prefer a CHICK one. It's not hard to imagine Josy/Maya preferring the MC date a nice girl who is their friend like Jill, compared to finding out that he's been fucking his way through their sorority sisters if they get into the HOTs. With that said, maybe there is more context in the game, because I admit that early on I thought that Sage would be the mirror version of Jill - a character who is very difficult if not impossible to pursue if you're a CHICK character (the way that most relationship gains and Isabella's approval on Jill's path only work if you're neutral or CHICK), but that's only true of the very initial meeting, and you can do the full existing Sage relationship line as a massive CHICK character, and she will still obviously start to catch feelings for the MC just the same way as she does with a DIK character.

Its hard not to imagine that going to stay with Sage and then fucking your way through all the HOT encounters in Ep 4 would not eventually play out poorly with Maya and Josy or that they would somehow not learn about them, though. While Sage keeps those encounters fairly private, there are a lot of misc encounters in those episodes (from Mona/Camila to Melanie/Sarah to Lily and so on), and it's hard time imagine the MC can really fuck basically every member of the HOTs and expect it to remain a secret.
 

zoyle

Member
Jan 23, 2019
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165
You do have points about special skills required to manage someone else's work that I agree with. But I don't really see a problem for putting it on your resume. If you don't want to mention you worked on a XXX game you can just say you worked as an independent contractor for a game development studio developing games in Python and then move onto technology details
Yeah. I am in an area that features a lot of NDAs for contractors, so what you'd need to do is say you worked in the games industry in python but can't talk about it in more than vague generalities due to an NDA, and ask them to give you some specific coding questions.

However, that is simply not nearly as good as being able to show them your actual code, as no on-the-spot coding test or challenge is nearly as informative to a hiring manager as seeing your actual production code, how you comment your code, and all the other things you can see in an actual code review.
 

zoyle

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Jan 23, 2019
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As far as I know, many people on this forum have previously supported DPC on patreon, or are still supporting him.
Speaking for myself, I already bought Being a DIK on Steam and I'm positive I'll buy Season 2 as soon as it becomes available.
As much as I wish I could support DPC on his patreon as well, that unfortunately is no longer an option for me. I'm a freelance artist and this global scale situation we currently find ourselves in has made my future look a bit uncertain.

A lot of people have a "try before you buy" kind of mentality when it comes to games, especially when it comes to adult games. And for a good reason.
I mean, how many projects are constantly being abandoned without even leaving the alpha stage? It really shouldn't come as a surprise that many people are just wary.

I'm not gonna delve into the "how piracy is sometimes beneficial in the long run" topic. I'm not very well informed when it comes to that subject, but from what I've heard, F95 has been a good source of exposure for DPC and his games.

No, he doesn't owe anyone on this forum any kind of respect or gratitude, it's definitely the other way around and I only hope he knows that.
I mean, I'm here on the forum so I clearly agree, as I certainly haven't paid for everything I try. Like you, I've contributed in the past and am not right now due to the current economic situation. It's just a reality that creating a really good product - a completed game, with good content and materials - is an enormous task that significantly surpasses what most people could ever do with hobby time and probably exceeds what a single individual can do even with full professional time.

But that's not to say I can't imagine why a creator would tire of this place, where so many forum posts are whining about update speed (from people who aren't paying, as the ones who are can whine directly on Patreon) and being salty about design choices not meeting their exact specific fetish or fantasy content.
 
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zoyle

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Jan 23, 2019
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There's a lot of this 'piracy' word bandied around here. If the game was purely on Steam say for example, the game was pureluy obtained by 'buying' it...then this is a piracy site.

These games are few and far between. If you accept donations, you are giving your game away. It's free, therefore there is no piracy here. There is no legal jargon to agree to either. It's a free product that they accept donations for. If AVN devs have an issue with this, then maybe they should stop accepting 'donations' and make it purely a paywall product with DRM such as Steam. Even if they could give a dollar a month, some people are so obsessed and indoctrinated with Steam, they will still prefer to 'buy' it there.

However they won't, as they know most of their revenue stream (donated) comes from people on sites such as this. It's a double edged sword. Bottom line is, most AVN's are not sold, they are working on them anyway and accept 'donations' from admirers. DPC apparently whines his revenue stream keeps changing (my heart bleeds), well then maybe charge for your product and skip the donations. He won't (none of them will) as they know purely charging for it won't make them enough money (unless they do it purely for the actual fun of it, and that rarely lasts very long).

I do agree on many other points of your post especially no serious programer is ever going to put a porn game on thier CV.

Just my 2cents on this piracy issue.
Acting Lessons and Being a DIK (Season 1, so Ep1-4) are sold on Steam, you knew that, right?

It's hard to blame someone in a niche industry from also using a path that allows more direct interaction and feedback from their biggest fans, to say nothing of allowing those people to pay more than retail price (eg Patreon). That's exactly why Patreon exists, and the whales are almost certainly where a majority of the income comes from - for someone whose doing this full time, stability of income is a pretty big concern!

I mean, I'm here, and I get the other side - I tried this game without paying, and I'm far more likely to pay now! (it is the best or the 2nd best game in the genre, in my opinion). So he definitely benefits - but he gets that benefit regardless of whether he's active here, and it doesn't come without associated costs. I don't think it's unreasonable to understand why a creator could have mixed feelings about that.
 

Holy Bacchus

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Dec 13, 2018
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A dream sequence doesn't contain actual moments and interactions either. Your complaint seems to be that one fantasy setting is being picked over the other.
Because dream sequences, when done well, can actually give an insight into a character's thoughts, particularly their subconscious thoughts and feelings about certain characters and/or events. A perfect example of this would be in the game Light Of My Life where not only does the MC have some dream sequences, but so too do the 2 main LIs and they're very good at showing how the characters are dealing with their feelings, particularly those related to a tragic event that acts as a catalyst for the events of the story.

The MC has gone through a lot in the short time they've been at college, so seeing their subconscious craft a scenario set in the DnG world to see how their mind is sorting through all the chaos and relationship drama would be, for me, far more insightful than seeing LIs get irrationally jealous, suspicious, or possibly even angry over a fantasy RPG.
 

zoyle

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Jan 23, 2019
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Because dream sequences, when done well, can actually give an insight into a character's thoughts, particularly their subconscious thoughts and feelings about certain characters and/or events. A perfect example of this would be in the game Light Of My Life where not only does the MC have some dream sequences, but so too do the 2 main LIs and they're very good at showing how the characters are dealing with their feelings, particularly those related to a tragic event that acts as a catalyst for the events of the story.

The MC has gone through a lot in the short time they've been at college, so seeing their subconscious craft a scenario set in the DnG world to see how their mind is sorting through all the chaos and relationship drama would be, for me, far more insightful than seeing LIs get irrationally jealous, suspicious, or possibly even angry over a fantasy RPG.
The game already has had some dream sequences (mostly erotic), but given the MC doesn't play that game regularly (or ever, except in that one very brief scene), it doesn't make a ton of sense as a vehicle for their thoughts. You could certainly use dream sequences (even erotic render dream sequences) to convey the character's worries and thoughts. However, I think most of the ways you might think of as ways to do that might make folks upset or start to involve content that not everyone wants in their games. For example, it would make a lot of sense for the MC to be worried about Quinn taking advantage of Maya and pressuring her or duping her into the restaurant scheme, but a lot of people would be upset if the protagonist had a NTR Maya dream worrying about it, because they don't want NTR content in their game. DPC threw a small bone in this direction in some of the rewards renders (there's the Mixed render series that is a series of Maya x Quinn with a strapon scenes), but those are much easier to avoid if you don't like that kind of content than something directly in the game.

NTR content, or at least well-done NTR content, doesn't bother or offend me, but that so many creators feel obligated to put switches and options in their game to disable or conceal NTR content from those who don't want it is a pretty strong indicator that they feel like it would turn users off of their creation.
 
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