I have to chime in here again, and I really hope you read this,
Thundorn, because I do really love your ability to create amazing visuals and interesting stories.
Let me preface this by saying, as a creative, I know how much it can sting, to spend a countless amount of hours creating a thing that you're really proud of, just to have to it demolished by those it is designed for. It's not nice, but it is always going to happen. I learned the hard way that you have to just suck it up, take in what is being said (good or bad), learn from it and try to do better.
I didn't really hold any punches when bashing this game and it was mostly because of your decision making, with taking on another free-roam game. While it's been on my mind, I stand by what I said.
You said this before:
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I just don't understand, when support for your previous "HUGE undertaking" free-roam game, has been lacking, and you don't have much time to work on your game(s), why you would take on another "HUGE undertaking".
What is going to happen, is exactly what happened with Deeper, we'll be waiting months between updates. When they come, because of the workload required by free-roam games, they will be lacking any meaningful content. And a year from now, we still won't be seeing a product that any of us would want to support.
Free-roam games can be good. But too many devs take them on thinking they can make it a success. But as you have seen, it is not as easy as it looks, which boggles my mind why you're doing it again.
Create a VN, something with a much lighter workload, you'll be able to spend your time on quality content, instead of struggling with a complex system. People will see more content more frequently and will be more inclined to support you.
With your amazing render skills, and ability to tell a story, I'm pretty positive that I would support a VN of yours. But I will never support a project like this, where it's future is so uncertain, just as it was, with Deeper.
But I wanted to expand on it...
I did that because I do love what you create (apart from the free-roam mechanics), and I would love to see you do more. People will complain when they like a thing but want it better. It's when they're silent, that you should be worried.
I know you might not value the opinions of those in a pirate forum. But please, mate, don't make the mistake of painting everyone with that brush. There are a good amount of us, myself included, that go on to support games we like. Look at this site as a pool of people you have to win over; potential supporters. It might only be 5% (?) of them, but that's still big when you look at the views on this thread, 47 thousand (at the time of this post).
You don't have to create this huge expansive story to see success. There have been so many developers that made it by keeping things simple, knowing their limits, but maintaining a consistent level of quality that kept people coming back for more.
You being on SubscriberStar might be a kick in the balls, but it's not purgatory, you haven't been banished or forgotten. Patreon is not the center of the universe. You have many avenues to promote yourself and your game(s), this site being just one of many.
Just please, keep at it, try to take heed of the pages of replied here, as difficult as it might be, it's a resource that you should be exploiting.
Best of luck mate, I really mean it.
PS: A VN of this game or Deeper would be fucking amazing, seriously!