98% of patreon projects also have communities around them questioning if any progress is being made much like this one, and much like this one the answer is usually "no". So I'm not sure that's a statistic you want to go with lol. And I'll bet you anything that 98% of projects if given the opportunity will also draw out their development over 9 years if given the opportunity to. Like I've said before in this thread, we didn't need to see constant progress updates or trials or anything but the one and only thing you need to do is not give people reason to think you are milking the patreon for money while not working on the game and given the state this game has released in along with the years of promises, release dates, and other stuff I really struggle to be convinced that he wasn't just milking the patreon. If not in the last year, then in years prior.
"""Finished""" indeed. This game has been nearly "finished" for more than 3 years now if the progress reports and blog posts are to be believed. This is why haters exist, the game being released into an incomplete state is secondary, the main focus is on HW and the promises or lies said. Is it a coincidence that the only 2 complete levels (Fire and Electric) are the only 2 levels we got to see demo's for because he had to release them to prove progress was being made? Frankly, I don't know but how does one turn a 5 stage platformer with a million+ dollar budget into a 9+ year long development cycle which releases not only incomplete, but with demo text that was written 3-5+ years ago still in it... add onto the constant review deleting, reporting of any posts critical of him or the game, and stalking of places where discussion happens he's not exactly hard to dislike. I don't personally hate him, but this release has left me sorely disappointed in him.
The perfect game is completely subjective to each person, and each person has their own idea in their head of what the gameplay : porn ratio should be and what type of gameplay or porn they even like, no one is saying FF had to be the perfect game but when you have a dev who makes a big deal about wanting to make a game that "isn't just a porn game" and you repeatedly tell people the game is nearly complete for years only for players to discover "no it ain't" there are some hard questions that need to be asked. I've been working under the assumption for years that he was not milking the patreon and was simply incompetent, but the absolute state this game released in really throws that into question. It especially doesn't help when many of his detractors (myself included) have warned him years in advance that some of his choices were silly, such as the 21 endings, the silver databases, spending so much on voice acting, having such a heavy focus on story, and some of the gameplay issues.
I'm starting to think its time to petition for a "patreon" tag for games because anytime I see a patreon linked on the thread OP it's almost synonymous with "5+ years of dev cycles to not release a game while collecting monthly paychecks.".
EDIT: To add on a point I just thought of. This dev was willing to delay the game and miss release dates 7+ times, but wasn't willing to delay the game 1 month to fix serious issues in the "soft" launch?
