I want to say something about how it might be a sense of scale, the writers only get one character through the submission process and then they have to wait who knows how long for Fenoxo, Savin, and their crew to finally throw the character in when they need content for an update, so they go all in on one single beloved babychild of a character- but the cynical realist part of my brain would rather ask who writes for these folks in the first place, and what are their motivations for writing for these particular people, even knowing they're not going to see any of the cash these goofballs are raking in off their hard work?
I want to say something about how you can make self contained sandbox narratives and quest lines interesting, so long as there's a sense of interactivity and player freedom, consequences or impacts that carry on after it's over, choices to be made that feel satisfying on some level- but there's not many choices to begin with in this game. Past character creation, everything feels like it devolves into "Do you want to continue this content, yes, or no-maybe-later?" In some portions of the game, the linearity became a writer's weapon against the game's playerbase. The entire kitsune village seems to exist solely to rub people the wrong way and remind them that they're at the mercy of the writers if old screenshots are to be believed. Kind of a blatant power trip...
I want to say something encouraging about how the game's a framework that can be modified and built upon later, these sorts of things can be improved on and the game can be opened up in all kinds of ways- but liiiiike.. People are throwing wads of cash at this group to be drip fed a single scene a month, if that, often written by some rando volunteer, and when they're done milking it for all the cash it can possibly generate for them, they'll drop the project abruptly with some sloppily thrown together final confrontation, and then start a brand new project that they'll build up hype for with countless promises and lots of commissioned artwork before plopping out a supremely bare bones Corruption of Champions 3, and starting the process all over again. They'll be enjoying renewed financial success while a bunch of unpaid modders duct tape and stitch CoC 2 or TiTS into something worth playing- doing Fenoxo's crew's job for them after they've taken the cash and jumped ship to 'the next big project'.
A project that will be even more soulless and miserable because they'll need fresh writers to do all their work for them after the last batch stay behind to cradle the corpses of their now abandoned characters. But the modders' improved version of CoC2 or TiTS might give a new generation of players the false impression that these guys are talented developers and should be trusted with more money... So the even less worthwhile game gets even more money, while the people doing the actual work never seen a penny.
I'unno. This whole thing feels gross and miserable. I don't feel like anyone's a winner here, 'cept for maybe Fenoxo's pirate crew, pillaging people's work to profit off it. I'm out of optimism. Game's just not fun, and won't be fun until it's 'dead' and a bunch of people can crack it open and put it back together again in interesting new ways. I'm really burned out on linearity in gaming at this point, sick of being told how I feel in a scene rather than being made to actually feel through the writing. Blugh.
