An enormous amount of bitching and moaning about it not being a real game, and then an even larger amount of bitching when I start turning it into one.
I do read this forum, seeking out negative critique that I don't get on Patreon on Discord because believe it or not I care about feedback. However, what no one understands is how difficult it is for a developer to please everyone.
"I do read this forum, seeking out negative critique", but complains about people bitching and moaning in the first sentence.
This response is to set the record straight. I work on this game night and day, development is slower now because the code has reached a point where I can't just add things willy nilly without consequences. The last few engine versions have not been very good, and I have been chasing down bugs. There is so much more that goes into each build than what's on the release notes. I write this game from scratch in C++, by myself, in addition to making most of the art.
I have an issue with this because as far as I can tell, you working on this project alone is a self imposed limitation, not a money limitation or anything. So it's kind of weird to be proudly proclaiming you work on the project alone while it sees little progress, even by your own admittance. Most of the people talking about slow progress here are blaming you working on the project alone after all. I don't think anybody expects a single person to do much better, so you're a bit off base there.
It's fine that there is harsh criticism here, but please keep it constructive and don't spread lies about my character as a developer. I have never been out to scam anyone, having the freedom to develop this game means far more to me than money, but unfortunately we live in a world where you have to pay to be alive.
Well to be clear/devils advocate here, you don't need to set out to scam anybody to scam them. Nobody is the bad guy in their own mind. But there sure are a lot of shitty people in the world who make excuses for why their behavior is okay, right? At the end of the day, are you living up to your promises (Rhetorical question here)? That's what matters.
Don't forget I give away my latest content for free when it's time to update the pubic build. I could have charged $20 on Steam, but I made it free saying to myself "no, I already make a generous amount on Patreon".
Oh wow, we should all bow before your greatness/generosity huh.
I've gotta say overall, I wouldn't rate your "character" very highly after this post. You spent a lot of time talking about how difficult things are for you, and insulting people criticizing your game. Then you try to add in how generous and wonderful you are with the final message. You proved the people attacking your character right with this post. This was your chance to be like "Sorry I fucked up" and talk about how you'll do better, but all I'm seeing is "My life is so hard" and no mention of you taking/talking about any action to quicken the progress of the game.
TLDR: You posted here just to attack people and try to garner sympathy from those same people in the same damn message.
Constructive criticism time:
What you just did was the opposite of what you should be trying to do as a game developer. The only part of your message that was potentially useful to anybody that had concerns about you and the game development is when you said "Admittedly, I was not prepared for dealing with that when I first started this game." Focus more on that, but do it with stuff that we actually have concerns about right now. And then don't just stop at mentioning issues, talk about how you plan to fix them. If you're not capable of fixing them, then the people with those concerns could be on to something huh?
The next time you post here if you're game, I recommend you try to ease concerns, not reinforce them or create new ones. I'm actually pretty surprised you'd post a message like this here. I'll try to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're having a bad day, cause this post was just a bad idea all around. Like, it's shockingly easy to pacify people here, but you did pretty much nothing to ease tensions, actually I feel like you've made things worse.
What part of this message was supposed to garner a healthier relationship/dialogue between people here? We all know game development is hard, we all know you're working on the project alone. Most the people with concerns here are well aware of those things. You didn't really address any of the actual issues with this post. What was your goal? To be understood? Mentioning things we already know.
Try understanding your fanbase. If you want people to be understanding of your problems, be understanding of theirs. You have the power, you have the responsibility to start things off right. What's easier/more realistic, a legion of people all behaving well or one developer behaving well? This is the pace you just set for conversation here. My response could have been completely different if your message was different.