Ren'Py Lessons in Love [v0.44.0] [Selebus]

[vehemental]

BTW, I watched some video essays on Elden Ring to gather contemporary intel and noticed quite a lot of people framing their playthroughs as momentous struggles coming with massive personal growth, so I do recount my dismissal of your use of it as an example. I hadn't realized people took not using a great shield as so significant in their human development. I was totally off base there.

Dawg how many arguments are you going to pretentiously strawman before you realize how much of a piece of shit you come across as?

 

[PrincessEuphy]

Dawg how many arguments are you going to pretentiously strawman before you realize how much of a piece of shit you come across as?

Can't you just take the W? I was being nice and extending an olive branch only for you to rudely slap it down. Now it's a rotten olive branch.

 

[vehemental]

Can't you just take the W? I was being nice and extending an olive branch only for you to rudely slap it down. Now it's a rotten olive branch.

This tack might have worked if you were, as you think, the only person in the room with any media literacy. Instead, it's just tacky. Ha. See what I did there? I related the tack you took, as in the path of a boat through the wind, with it being tacky, as in showing poor taste in quality. Hahaha.

Edit: sorry for derailing the thread everyone, I'll be done now. Much love <3

 

[fasoaga]

From thoughts on grinding, event triggers, sensei quest etc...

Selebus knows everyone, who went beyond room with clocks are just using wiki, guide, urm to bypass the grind. So about making player feel the uncomfortable loneliness sensei feels, i don't think sel was going for that.

Sel is a "Turkish Ice Cream Man". You pay for ice cream and he gives you the ice cream. But it's not so easy because he uses different tricks to confuse you so you can't just grab it. You have to work for it. It is part of the experience.

And Sel is an amazing ice cream maker, but the problem is he is talentless on all the other aspects. he doesn't have the sleight of hands to to make confusing tricks that outsmart you so that you can't grab the ice cream. So what does he do? He just put the ice cream on the stick and put it on the air where you cant reach it and swinging it. Sure you can't grab it just like the other Turkish Ice Cream vendors but it just isn't the same. You just wait there checking your phone while waiting for selebus arms to tire out and had to put it down.(This is the metaphor for urm, guide etc...)

Sure there was an attempt but neither side was involved in this experience.

He knows how off putting it all is, but still does it. And he can partly get away with it because he knows his turkish ice cream is much better than those italian ice cream or brand cornettos. Sure his product have terrible wrappers, soft and wet cones, his vendor smells like shit. But he has the best ice cream around here. And he enjoys this.



TLDR:
He is the kid who proudly says "i didn't study at all but still got the A- on math test." But he is trying to be a mechanical engineer.
Or Sel is a talented writer but a talentless artist, because his art is a sandbox game not a book or visual novel.

 

[skwada]

My broader point (not meeting the art at its level, using fallacious reasoning to justify one's dislike) applies to all of it. I bring up the individual points only in reference. No strawmanning needed.

Wasting time - indeed, the game is trying to waste your time. It therefore makes no sense to critique it for wasting your time. This is like critiquing a silent film for not having spoken dialogue. Of course, you can say "I do not like having my time wasted," that's fair, but this does not translate to an active or meaningful critique of the work. Indeed, you can say my broader point is that failing to distinguish personal dislike with meaningful critique is the problem here. It is not the case that just because someone dislikes something that whatever reasoning they come up for justifying that dislike is meaningful. Meaningful critique requires meeting the work at its level and suggesting improvements within its intended vector, which is by and large not happening here. (That said, to be clear, this is not something unique to F95 users; people in general have, as is such a meme, low media literacy, and in general respond to unhappy feelings by trying to attack the source of said feelings. Measured critique is rare.)

Sandbox gameplay - it is, to my understanding, completely purposeful that as the game goes on progression gets increasingly obtuse and annoying. The purpose is not to be intuitive and provide a clear method of progression at all times. Any meaningful critique of the Sandbox gameplay will have to first begin on this level. What are better ways the game could be obtuse and time-wasting while still being obtuse and time-wasting? That's a pretty complex subject, isn't it? It would be interesting to see what people could come up with. Instead, we get very meaningless statements like "it is not intuitive." Does one imagine Selebus necessitates an arbitrary phone call to an arbitrary person at an arbitrary time slot and thinks "Yep, this is intuitive, all according to plan?" No. Do people think that Selebus has no awareness it's annoying to grind Wakana or Chinami affection or whatever with limited weekend slots? Hopefully not. Therefore, how the fuck is one supposed to respond to observations like "Sir, this is not intuitive!" I'm sorry to say there is no response except to grimace a bit. You've not met the game with that level of critique. You have to think: "Okay, this is not intuitive, how to we present this in a way players will agree with instead of get upset about?" And once you have an answer, present your critique like that. As an example: "I would feel better about the arbitrary way in which we have to guess when to call people if the story better emphasized that Sensei himself was randomly calling and that it was frustrating for him too when nobody answered, because then it would feel like the developer is self-aware at least." (This, of course, is up for debate itself, but at least it's working within the intended context of the game.) In short, It would be beneficial to think a bit more about these matters. If you want to critique the sandbox, it needs to be more internal to the game. And to be clear, I think the sandbox is not very creative or well-made in particular. But the question of how to maintain this obtuse, intentionally abrasive / unintuitive progression while improving it is actually a very difficult one. So I don't go about posting lazy "critiques" which in reality mean and say nothing. I'm still thinking about how it could be done better within this context.

You can think of this in relation to deaf players complaining about the audio cues BTW. It is literally impossible for them to progress on their own. That can't be a pleasant feeling. But it clearly makes no sense to critique the game for using audio to convey important information. If the game didn't do that it wouldn't be Lessons in Love anymore. That is a "critique from the angle of accessibility" (external) vs "a critique for the ideal form of a game as intended" (internal). And I think in general we should want creators resilient to a storm of meaningless external critique since that's how you end up with generic slurry. It's to some degree ironic that LiL has attracted so many with its boldness, yet as soon as that boldness is unpleasant in any way the player turns their back and starts complaining. I think that an interesting thing to think about here may be the bugs. I know someone deathly afraid of bugs who quit LiL immediately because it has a lot of bugs. However, it's unlikely f95 bros are in particular upset about bugs. That's 50% because the average person is not so afraid of bugs and 50% because it's clearly part of the artistic purpose to have so many bugs. This is to say, people UNDERSTAND the bugs as internal to the work and would no more say to remove them as they would say to make every heroine an adult. It's only when things get more nuanced and abstract like game design that people start failing to understand, then add on personal displeasure and it's a recipe for disaster. It's just a bit too hard to understand something being unpleasant and unintuitive and so on can be on purpose. The user I responded to suggested awareness of this, but then immediately indicated that it would be acceptable only if, for example, it had skill expression. We can see the absurdity here. Imagine the bug-hater suggesting that bugs are only okay in specific contexts like the bugs are mostly out of frame, or if there's an option in the menu to turn bugs off... Who respects the artistic integrity of World of Warcraft including an option to make all the spiders lobsters in their spider expansion?

Affection/Lust: "used to be ok but is now very grindy": Yeah, this is yet another case that is the above 1:1. That is indeed the purpose. It is no secret that Selebus does not look fondly on western eroge gamifying lust and designing their games around you like fucking heroines silly. There is heavy nuance in the lust scenes within LiL that you are seeing the consequences of sex addiction - the consequences of taking girls and fucking them way too much (like Ayane getting so coomer brained she banged Sensei in a dangerous position and got caught by Kirin). This is to say that there is an intention that grinding lust is NOT a good thing. It is NOT a pleasant activity. It does NOT have pleasant consequences. Therefore: if one is to want to critique lust, you have to engage at this level. This sucks - okay, yes, so what? Lessons in Love will NEVER make it fun to grind lust. The activity will never be fun and encouraging. It wants you to fucking stop, if I'm being honest. So you need to suggest ways in which to make grinding lust suck but in a way which feels superior to the current execution. Off the top of my head, something I may say is that each point of lust should have its own scene, and the scenes could be really unpleasant, like Sensei is really blunt and you feel the damage he is causing in that moment blah blah. Envision him telling the heroine to shut up or whatever so it's mostly a silent and unpleasant affair. This would maintain most unpleasant aspects of the system while not feeling like a low-effort grind. However, I'm not fully sure on that, since there may be a purpose specifically to the repetition that I'm missing. All of this is to say that there is indeed likely room for improvement here, but the improvement will never and should never come in the form of making it not feel like a horrible and unpleasant time. (And therefore the post was total hogwash with zero substance.)

Thanks for the explanation, I think I understand your perspective better now. To summarize, you're saying that so long as the grind is intended to serve the game's artistic vision, it is justified, even if it makes the game a slog to play through.

And that's basically the underlying source of our contention. Most people play this game to experience the story rather than to experience Sel's game design. You could argue that the gameplay and story are intertwined so you can't truly experience one without the other but practically speaking, the execution of the gameplay is so poor in this case that it actively undermines the experience. You could claim that undermining the experience is exactly the intention but that does not preclude one from criticizing it - I really think that the decision to waste peoples' time is a poor one, regardless of how well it aligns with Sel's vision. You could counter that there is a degree of sanctity in an author's vision for their work but I disagree:

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[PrincessEuphy]

Thanks for the explanation, I think I understand your perspective better now. To summarize, you're saying that so long as the grind is intended to serve the game's artistic vision, it is justified, even if it makes the game a slog to play through.

And that's basically the underlying source of our contention. Most people play this game to experience the story rather than to experience Sel's game design. You could argue that the gameplay and story are intertwined so you can't truly experience one without the other but practically speaking, the execution of the gameplay is so poor in this case that it actively undermines the experience. You could claim that undermining the experience is exactly the intention but that does not preclude one from criticizing it - I really think that the decision to waste peoples' time is a poor one, regardless of how well it aligns with Sel's vision. You could counter that there is a degree of sanctity in an author's vision for their work but I disagree:

You must be registered to see the links

I also think the game design is not as impressive as the story, and I think there is room for criticism in how it could be improved, but that's not what's happening. Most of the criticism is for how it shouldn't exist at all, and that's how we end up with the author portraying critics as various horrific objects. You say that "that being the intention does not preclude one from criticizing it," but you have to realize what this means. Think again about the silent film being critiqued for having no spoken dialogue. Is it fair for someone to have disliked the movie and had a bad time due to there being no spoken dialogue? Sure. But what is the significance of CRITIQUING a silent movie for having no spoken dialogue? What is the intention? What is the purpose? Obviously a silent film is not going to introduce spoken dialogue, because then it wouldn't be a silent film. We can generally say that, even if theoretically a silent film may have been better with spoken dialogue, it is not likely to be meaningful to have critiqued it on this basis, since it's like saying no silent films should exist.

Think of someone who doesn't like tsundere characters critiquing any show with a tsundere character. Think of someone who doesn't like pornography critiquing a porn game. Think of someone who doesn't like red hair critiquing a redhead character. Think of someone who doesn't like fat people skipping every piece of dialogue from a fat character.

Essentially, you are faced with this problem: Person A doesn't like X and thinks that in no case X should ever exist.

How does a creator of X respond to that?

Should there be no tsundere characters because the guy who doesn't like tsundere characters is having a bad time? Should pornography not exist? When faced with a horde of angry anti-porn crowd should an author be swayed by all their ~criticism~ of porn?

What in these cases are the meaning and significance to their actions? Is there any case where an author should listen to them? Is there any case in which they are providing meaningful critique? I don't really think so. I think in all cases they are merely mistaking self-expression for meaningful criticism. Even with death of the author - even if Selebus literally exploded right now and there was no assumption of purpose - what meaning would there be to someone looking at X and saying "I don't like X, ergo it shouldn't exist?" We can appreciate this as an individual expressing themselves and their tastes. We can't appreciate this as meaningful critique.

And this is why the conversations here are so maddening. The unproductiveness is obvious. LiL is a game where the player having a bad time is fundamental. Let's say, time wasting is fundamental to LiL. You may not like time wasting (X). You may firmly say that media should never waste your time, and maybe that the other elements weren't enough to justify the time wasting for you. So what? Seriously - like, what was your point? Okay, you've expressed yourself. What does that have to do with LiL? You would be speaking purely in your own context from your own perspective about your own desires. And that has nothing to do with the game. The game is not designed around making any given individual happy. This manner of one-sided rejection is fundamentally rejecting LiL's existence, just like anti-pornography crowds would flatly reject porn, or tsundere haters flatly reject tsunderes, etc. It is one-way and unilateral. If the player is not having a bad time at some point, it's not LiL.

All these conversations are like witnessing someone open up an NTR game then complain constantly about NTR and criticize the game for having NTR when in reality the writing is so good and the art so good that if only it weren't NTR it would be amazing if only it were vanilla it would be the best game ever blah blah. Who cares?

This is to say, and I realize this might not have been clear, that the point of criticism is to indicate flaws within a work or otherwise engender improvement. It is not a flaw to have something that people don't like (unless one genuinely holds the world view that "good" = "I like it"). It would not be an improvement to simply remove anything a certain person dislikes. It says nothing about the work or its internal reality for someone to unilaterally complain like this. That's why I say it is not meaningful. To be meaningful, you have to start on the basis. "Okay, this is porn, let's see how it is as porn." "Okay, this is a tsundere character, let's see how well-written they are or not." If these conversations were about how SENSEI QUEST doesn't waste time as well as it could have, or the lust grinding isn't unpleasant in the most meaningful of ways, sure, those could be interesting conversations. Instead it's about skipping all the time-wasting and saying it's bad for existing. Not very meaningful. You have to play the game of the one you're speaking to. It's no wonder if you just shout in someone's face that the thing they're making shouldn't exist because you don't like it that they will not be receptive.

 

[Martogor]

I also think the game design is not as impressive as the story, and I think there is room for criticism in how it could be improved, but that's not what's happening. Most of the criticism is for how it shouldn't exist at all, and that's how we end up with the author portraying critics as various horrific objects. You say that "that being the intention does not preclude one from criticizing it," but you have to realize what this means. Think again about the silent film being critiqued for having no spoken dialogue. It is fair for someone to have disliked the movie and had a bad time due to there being no spoken dialogue? Sure. But what is the significance of CRITIQUING a silent movie for having no spoken dialogue? What is the intention? What is the purpose? Obviously a silent film is not going to introduce spoken dialogue, because then it wouldn't be a silent film. We can generally say that, even if theoretically a silent film may have been better with spoken dialogue, it is not meaningful to have critiqued it on this basis.

Think of someone who doesn't like tsundere characters critiquing any show with a tsundere character. Think of someone who doesn't like pornography critiquing a porn game. Think of someone who doesn't like red hair critiquing a redhead character. Think of someone who doesn't like fat people skipping every piece of dialogue from a fat character.

Essentially, you are faced with this problem: Person A doesn't like X and thinks that in no case X should ever exist.

How does a creator of X respond to that?

Should there be no tsundere characters because the guy who doesn't like tsundere characters is having a bad time? Should pornography not exist? When faced with a horde of angry anti-porn crowd should an author be swayed by all their ~criticism~ of porn?

What in these cases are the meaning and significance to their actions? Is there any case where an author should listen to them? Is there any case in which they are providing meaningful critique? I don't really think so. I think in all cases they are merely mistaking self-expression for meaningful criticism. Even with death of the author - even if Selebus literally exploded right now and there was no assumption of purpose - what meaning would there be to someone looking at X and saying "I don't like X, ergo it shouldn't exist?" We can appreciate this as an individual expressing themselves and their tastes. We can't appreciate this as meaningful critique.

And this is why the conversations here are so maddening. The unproductiveness is obvious. Selebus has chosen to make something in which the player having a bad time is fundamental. Let's say, time wasting is fundamental to LiL. You may not like time wasting (X). You may firmly say that media should never waste your time, and maybe that the other elements weren't enough to justify the time wasting for you. So what? Seriously - like, what is the point? Okay, you've expressed yourself. What does that have to do with LiL? You would be speaking purely in your own context from your own perspective about your own desires. And that has nothing to do with the game. The game is not designed around making any given individual happy. It is fundamentally rejecting LiL's existence, just like anti-pornography crowds would flatly reject porn, or tsundere haters flatly reject tsunderes, etc. It is one-way and unilateral.

All these conversations are like witnessing someone open up an NTR game then complain constantly about NTR and criticize the game for having NTR when in reality the writing is so good and the art so good that if only it weren't NTR it would be amazing if only it were vanilla it would be the best game ever blah blah. Who cares?

This is to say, and I realize this might not have been clear, that the point of criticism is to indicate flaws within a work or otherwise engender improvement. It is not a flaw to have something that people don't like (unless one genuinely holds the world view that "good" = "I like it"). It would not be an improvement to simply remove anything a certain person dislikes. It says nothing about the work or its internal reality for someone to unilaterally complain like this. That's why I say it is not meaningful. To be meaningful, you have to start on the basis. "Okay, this is porn, let's see how it is as porn." "Okay, this is a tsundere character, let's see how well-written they are or not." Only then can a dialogue be formed. You have to play the game of the one you're speaking to. It's no wonder if you just shout in someone's face that the thing they're making shouldn't exist because you don't like it that they will not be receptive.

 

[skwada]

I also think the game design is not as impressive as the story, and I think there is room for criticism in how it could be improved, but that's not what's happening. Most of the criticism is for how it shouldn't exist at all, and that's how we end up with the author portraying critics as various horrific objects. You say that "that being the intention does not preclude one from criticizing it," but you have to realize what this means. Think again about the silent film being critiqued for having no spoken dialogue. Is it fair for someone to have disliked the movie and had a bad time due to there being no spoken dialogue? Sure. But what is the significance of CRITIQUING a silent movie for having no spoken dialogue? What is the intention? What is the purpose? Obviously a silent film is not going to introduce spoken dialogue, because then it wouldn't be a silent film. We can generally say that, even if theoretically a silent film may have been better with spoken dialogue, it is not likely to be meaningful to have critiqued it on this basis, since it's like saying no silent films should exist.

Think of someone who doesn't like tsundere characters critiquing any show with a tsundere character. Think of someone who doesn't like pornography critiquing a porn game. Think of someone who doesn't like red hair critiquing a redhead character. Think of someone who doesn't like fat people skipping every piece of dialogue from a fat character.

Essentially, you are faced with this problem: Person A doesn't like X and thinks that in no case X should ever exist.

How does a creator of X respond to that?

Should there be no tsundere characters because the guy who doesn't like tsundere characters is having a bad time? Should pornography not exist? When faced with a horde of angry anti-porn crowd should an author be swayed by all their ~criticism~ of porn?

What in these cases are the meaning and significance to their actions? Is there any case where an author should listen to them? Is there any case in which they are providing meaningful critique? I don't really think so. I think in all cases they are merely mistaking self-expression for meaningful criticism. Even with death of the author - even if Selebus literally exploded right now and there was no assumption of purpose - what meaning would there be to someone looking at X and saying "I don't like X, ergo it shouldn't exist?" We can appreciate this as an individual expressing themselves and their tastes. We can't appreciate this as meaningful critique.

And this is why the conversations here are so maddening. The unproductiveness is obvious. LiL is a game where the player having a bad time is fundamental. Let's say, time wasting is fundamental to LiL. You may not like time wasting (X). You may firmly say that media should never waste your time, and maybe that the other elements weren't enough to justify the time wasting for you. So what? Seriously - like, what was your point? Okay, you've expressed yourself. What does that have to do with LiL? You would be speaking purely in your own context from your own perspective about your own desires. And that has nothing to do with the game. The game is not designed around making any given individual happy. This manner of one-sided rejection is fundamentally rejecting LiL's existence, just like anti-pornography crowds would flatly reject porn, or tsundere haters flatly reject tsunderes, etc. It is one-way and unilateral. If the player is not having a bad time at some point, it's not LiL.

All these conversations are like witnessing someone open up an NTR game then complain constantly about NTR and criticize the game for having NTR when in reality the writing is so good and the art so good that if only it weren't NTR it would be amazing if only it were vanilla it would be the best game ever blah blah. Who cares?

This is to say, and I realize this might not have been clear, that the point of criticism is to indicate flaws within a work or otherwise engender improvement. It is not a flaw to have something that people don't like (unless one genuinely holds the world view that "good" = "I like it"). It would not be an improvement to simply remove anything a certain person dislikes. It says nothing about the work or its internal reality for someone to unilaterally complain like this. That's why I say it is not meaningful. To be meaningful, you have to start on the basis. "Okay, this is porn, let's see how it is as porn." "Okay, this is a tsundere character, let's see how well-written they are or not." If these conversations were about how SENSEI QUEST doesn't waste time as well as it could have, or the lust grinding isn't unpleasant in the most meaningful of ways, sure, those could be interesting conversations. Instead it's about skipping all the time-wasting and saying it's bad for existing. Not very meaningful. You have to play the game of the one you're speaking to. It's no wonder if you just shout in someone's face that the thing they're making shouldn't exist because you don't like it that they will not be receptive.

Imo basically none of the posts on this thread (including mine from earlier) are really intended as critique in the sense that you're describing. As the others put it, it's not that deep - people aren't coming on this site thinking that Sel reads their complaints, or that they're accomplishing anything productive by venting their frustrations with the gameplay - the vibe that I get is they're just here to chat about the game and kill time, similar to what we are doing by having this discussion .

I basically agree with everything you've written but I'd say one good thing that has come out of the constant complaints is the creation of linear mode mods