I mean I don't see why it would be a huge barrier for most people if the character is likable enough, which Brienne is. We're playing a porn game that puts horse cocks on 7 foot tall women, a girl falling in love with you really fast is one of the least weird things in the game.
Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's not a huge barrier, nobody seems to really care, so it's not a huge deal.
What does that even mean? What makes a character more or less suited for a VN? She's a cute girl you go on dates with and get closer to her over time, why hold such intense dislike for her/her content? Have no idea what your logic is here. I also don't see how it's shoehorning by the author if the devs allowed it.
VNs are usually games where you spend a large amount of time pursuing a single person. VNs usually have long, wandering routes devoted to said person, with the reward towards/near the end being sex.
The character just seemed really out of place in the world of TiTs, in style and tone. And overall, I just hated her writing, I though it was really bad and overly saccharine.
Paige was a much better example of a character that you took some time to romance and was still a fairly sweet experience.
Just off the top of my head, Treasure of Nadia, Summertime Saga, Being a Dik, have more patrons than CoC 2. All 3 of those games have smaller casts with more focus on each individual character than Fenoxo games and it's worked out VERY well for them, so that approach obviously isn't a restriction when it comes to making money.
I didn't say it was the
most successful game ever, just one of them. Of course there are myriad approaches to success, but when you hit one of them, you don't do a hard course correct to a different one and hope your audience follows.
And I certainly wouldn't want this game emulating any part of the straight up dumpster fire that is Summertime Saga's stunted development.
As it stands, TiTS and CoC2 have a good deal of overlap on a lot of characters, why not just reduce the overlap and give more content to those existing characters? Orlaith and Mara are similar enough that you don't need both of them for example. Same thing with Hashat and the new futa horse-girl.
Eh, I don't really agree that they are similar enough to not justify their existence.
But, if I had to give an opinion there, I would venture to say that certain characters are meant to be characters that we connect to emotionally, and certain ones are just fetish bait.
Orlaith and Hashat aren't really the kind of characters that really need more to them in terms of relationship development, they just exist to scratch an itch (also, both of them have more content planned iirc). Having a character that's a slight twist on another concept is probably just more exciting and not too much more work for the audience when there's no real emotional weight behind the character.
Regardless, I don't think many people are going to unsubscribe on their patreon for them trying to focus on existing characters of which could be one of their favorite ones. They could just say, "Hey we're going to try to do things this way and if you guys don't like it, we could continue like we have been before". Worst case, the most popular characters get more depth and just a few less new characters get added.
The thing is, this is pretty much already what they're doing...theoretically. That what companions are for. How well they're doing it is up in the air, but Ryn, Cait and soon, Berwyn have a pretty significant amount of focus developing their characters. The fact that all the companions aren't getting the same amount of focus is...unfortunate.
And, for what's it's worth, I know Sav plans to go further in the direction of "less companions, more depth", in their next game. pretty sure I can even find the quote if I look for a sec.
"Lessons have been learned for next time, but expect fewer companions, not more"
"Fewer companions = much greater depth & story integration and more reactivity"
"And that's why next time all the comps will be settled on in pre-production~"
"When we started CoC2 I didn't have any staff or really any serious writing/worldbuilding help aside from Tobs so pro-pro was just me throwing my own ideas at a wall
Now we can actually do things semi-professionally"
...I don't know how to do screenshots of Discord quotes.
Also, that last part actually seems pretty important.