every/nearly every movie gets shown to test audience (very demographic) and if they like it it goes on final production and theaters/straight to video/netflix/etc and if not liked then some parts are re-shot or something else until gets green light.
. I got to pretend I was an adult game MC and it worked out fine until my other crazy ex burned her alive in a house fire. I'm kidding about that part...I think?. Something like that would've worked great for Alice and MC's relationship, but less dramatized.
At least there is no crazy yandere in this game.Because I'm pretty sure I will reject her the first time I met her.Don't stick in crazy.I haven't played this update, but from reading the reactions the Alice ending doesn't make much sense to me. Obviously MC likes girls, and Alice does too. I'd even say that Alice likes girls more than guys, but I think continuing that style of relationship into the ending is a missed opportunity at character development.
I understand that Alice and MC have been hooking up with others the entire game, but I viewed that as more of a necessity. They had to keep their relationship secret from the parents. Alice was already with Leah before MC. MC had to pretend to be Leah's boyfriend etc. It was also experimental. Trying stuff out. Seeing what they enjoy. Like most young people do.
It's not like some couples IRL don't have a similar dynamic and then commit to being exclusive when they get married. Or at the least tone it down, perhaps only every so often instead of a regular thing. To keep things spicy, but not a major part of the relationship. I'd argue if you want to have sex with others more than with your SO, you aren't in a real committed relationship. I feel like, eventually, someone would be hurt. There is a thin line between consensual open relationships and cheating.
Related to that, this, from what I'm reading, may not be polyamorous. Polyamorous relationships are when the people involved are... in a relationship. They love each other, they are intimate emotionally and physically. Open relationships and swinging are different, there are no emotions involved, it's just for pleasure and fun. One of the people involved having a GF or BF on the side, but the other not having the same, isn't balanced. I don't think those types of relationships are stable long term. If Alice's GF wants to be serious with her and tries to make her dump MC we have a problem. And yes, that happens IRL. Girls can definitely leave their guy for another girl, especially if they already seem to prefer girls in the first place.
This all could've been solved with a simple choice in the update. Alice ( or MC ) asks the other if they want to be exclusive, or continue seeing other people too. Yes or no, simple and easy.
A while back, I had a girlfriend who was bisexual. She asked me if I would be ok if she hooked up with other girls every so often. I thought about it, and agreed. But I had conditions. 1- We do it together. I don't mind them focusing primarily on each other, but I wouldn't be comfortable with her going out on a "date" with someone else while I'm sitting at home. She isn't a hot-wife, she is my girlfriend. 2- Nobody we know. Yes, some of her friends were cute but I didn't want to risk them becoming more than friends (or them developing feelings for me or vise versa) . 3- I had to approve of the girl in question. That's all. She agreed and we made a couple profile on one of those dating sites and that worked out just fine for a while. It was a once a month or so activity, not a major part of the relationship. She got her carpet munching fix
no, they become married couple but still do occasional random sex with random girls.
It certainly doesn't have the same budget, that's why the different format, which you have to keep in mind integrity and impact wise, because it is different than putting the whole thing out in one go.
It is their decision, but it does bring up several problems. If you plan to make another game after this as a dev, but you fuck up your ending, that will hurt your credibility massively, it happened several times with other games already. On the other end, if you manage to make the whole game consistent, it creates trust that will earn you support on the next one already, there's examples for this as well. And just because you can jump off a cliff or shoot yourself in the foot, it doesn't mean that you should/must/have to, and that it would be the greatest idea ever. Especially when there's expectations from the audience you managed to gather in the meantime, but more about this below.
So what? Should I give my unweawering support and trust blindly when they can decide on a whim that they don't need to keep up the quality they did before? No. That's how you end up with people that milk - no, these guys don't do that and I'm not accusing them of such, don't get me wrong - or developers that go lazy in their work, and you'll make them right to do so by continuing to support them, creating a tendency that they and others will continue to follow. Just take a look around in some big names. Everyone's money is finite, and because of that, I do have to have standards, so if I get burned by developers despite the trust I put in them, then the gamble I took failed, and I will feel my mistrust toward the system as a whole being warranted. Sidenote, if I take everything into account, then yeah, around 10% of the games deserves to stay afloat for a long period.
I have no idea why it turned out the way it did, only guesses, and I don't have to know. You could ask the devs, who despite being active here are refusing to give a proper explanation why they decided to tear down everything they built for years. And by proper, I mean proper, not a "because I think it's good" type of answer.
And you think this isn't a kick in the face? It is just from different angle, but it stings more exactly because of the good times we all had playing it. Seeing something that we liked this much getting meticulously destroyed brick by brick at the end is so much worse than just leaving it unfinished.
I don't have a problem with the decision of ending the story, I have problem of how said ending is being executed.
If you'd put out an announcement that you're looking for people to test and give feedback about the ending, you'd had more than enough from every possible demography, free of charge. I can agree with the time constrait, but then again, just giving them the script about it or even just the outline and important plot points, before doing the whole rendering/coding/editing process would sufficed and you'd been able to draw conclusions of it long before you start the most time consuming aspects of it.
no but you can have patreon polls and my reply wasn't aimed on you.
Yeah if there was always going to be the open/poly ending with Alice, it would have been a nice alternative to have an existing throuple with Alice + Melody/Hailey/Leah....and Karina as a last resort just because I can't stand her character, but she's preferable to some rando lesbian girlfriend.
Well said, and I agree with all your points. My understanding was the MC was able to experiment/date around and sow his wild oats, but when Alice asked him to break up with the others and commit to her, that should have been a sign that both of them had gotten it out of their system, had their fun playing around but ultimately realized they were each other's soulmates and wanted to marry and settle down similar to Melody's ending.
Thank you for the rational comment. I was upset at the ending but didn’t wanna rant or anything. Like why break it off with your main girls if you’re going to continue having a open relationship with strangers? It doesn’t make sense to me.
