By the way, when we discuss "poor writing," are we referring to awkward dialogue or a weak overall storyline? These are two distinct issues. If everything was poor, I doubt you would continue playing our game
Currently, we are focusing on improving our dialogue system, so if that's what you're referring to, we're making progress in the right direction.
The story first season was good. Good premise, good art, and okayish writing. I'm not sure if maybe you were being cheeky or outright joking, but assuming that good writing is what gets or keeps players playing a porn game is a faulty assumption.
It's the porn. Each successive season's writing since the first has gradually, but noticeably decreased in quality. Imo, to me, it seems that after the first season writing has been more about trope chasing and artificially building drama between characters rather than pursuing storylines effectively and developing relationships between characters. I don't think it's the system for the dialogue that makes it feel contrived and shallow, as much as the dialogue that's in the system.
The first season was probably one of my favourite games on this site while I was playing it. I was really excited to play the second season, and your pacing of updates seemed to line up favourably with the pacing of story per season in such a way as to make it seem that following the game would be a relatively immersive experience in the world. But I thought the writing would get better each season through a combination of the lead writer getting more experience, better translations (because the game seems translated, and idk if it's written in English or no), and gaining more writers to allow for more complex storylines while keeping up with the dev cycle. Especially after the game was put on Steam, this seemed like the direction it would be going.
Reading the game, though, it's seemed like the opposite of all those things has happened. The relationship with each LI somehow seems shallower and less personal every season. LIs disappear and reappear from season to season with explanations that don't make sense within the setting. The storylines seem somehow rushed and plodding at the same time. The translations (if the game is even translated, Idk for sure) somehow seem even worse, with more and more words and phrases seeming like either wild typos that happen to still be words or very badly translated, leaving you feeling like you're missing out on a lot of the intended meaning. Given that, it could be that all the seeming flaws in the writing could just be a result of really terrible translation. The overall structure of a work isn't usually that badly affected by translation errors, but this text is delivered piecemeal enough that perhaps that is the whole of the issue. Translations are usually better when the translator is a native speaker of the language being translated to and fluent in the language being translated from.
Hoping the writing would improve and the lewd scenes are the only reason I kept going into Season 3. But the writing is getting to the point where it's getting difficult to even get into the lewd scenes anymore.
I enjoy the game overall, for sure. I just get frustrated that about the time I start really to get into a character's story and the MC's interactions with them, they disappear. Sure, you could bring them back after a semester or two, but for me much of the impact of building a relationship gets lost with absence. It's the same as RL where long-distance relationships tend not to last for very long. Characters' absences make me care a lot less about them later on, even if there's a good reason for their being away.
Anyway, I can't speak for others, but that's my personal feeling with things. I enjoy the game overall (I only play the sandbox mode), but there are way too many characters to interact with to be reasonable in my opinion. And for any that you do develop a connection with, you should be prepared to forget all about them after a semester or two.
I sort of both agree and disagree with CookieMonster here. I don't think having too many characters to keep track of is a problem if all or most of the characters are optional, and there were clear indications when interaction with a particular character was required for story reasons. But LIs disappearing seemingly at random for flimsy reasons that don't make sense in context of the story is a big problem. I think it's fine to serve up LIs buffet style and let the players have to choose the ones they want to romance/spend time with. I've seen that sort of structuring of the romanceable characters make choosing who to spend time with and the resulting relationships feel more impactful, as well as increasing replayability for those who feel that they're missing out. I've played some games that have done that successfully.
I think a big part of the frustration I have is that it seems like the game is getting more successful, but the quality is dropping. The team makes time to remaster old seasons and create DLCs for them, but the characters become less articulate and more generic while the plotlines are all over the place. I don't know how big the team is, so I can't say this is what caused the drop in quality, but from the outside, it looks like poor resource management is dividing the team's attention and resulting in a lower quality product. It's clear there are very talented artists and developers on the team. The writer(s) that came up with the premise and expanded it for Season 1 did a good job. Maybe the writer(s) need more help or time to properly develop story ideas and dialogue. Your publishing pace is pretty quick for a project of this scope. In a lot of ways it seems that the team should have the resources to make a better story because they were doing it once, but aren't anymore for some reason despite the game's apparent success.
