By your logic the way to avoid any problems with this game one just needs to not play the game. It seems like because you are a fan of the game you've decided to blame me for poor game design.
It's repetitive by it's very nature, not by anything I'm doing. By leaving in scenes and dialogue that no longer fit the story line and have already been viewed.
I wouldn't need hints or a walkthrough if elements of the game that are completed or no longer relevant were no longer available for viewing. The whole point of playing the game is to actually play it myself and not have to rely on a guide of some sort to avoid seeing repeat scenes that shouldn't be there to begin with.
If that much guidance is needed to avoid the repeat scenes why not just have proper game flow like many other games on here?
You're absolutely right to not like the game, if it's not you're thing then no one can tell you otherwise. There are also game design choices that I've made which I would not do for my next game, that much is true. It's all part of the learning experience of doing something new for the first time.
What's rubbing me the wrong way is the tone of your criticism. You've stated what's wrong as if you have the answers, yet your comments make me think that you don't. There is no way for me to make every single interaction non-repetitive without hiring some nerd from Google to write an AI that generates new content on it's own. Maybe I can write some procedural code that jumbles some lines together so they're new every time. Yet that still would be repetitive because the interactions would not truly be new or of any value.
Let's say I manually create new breakfast conversations, one hundred of them. You will eventually stumble upon something you've already seen. I'd have to ask myself why I'm delaying developing the rest of the story just so the player can have more non-essential dialogue over eggs.
It sounds like you prefer visual novels. Linear story progressions that always move forward. This is a sandbox game, repetition is inherent to the genre. I've created an in-game guide so those who don't care about free-roam can jump straight into the linear story. A lot of people seem to appreciate this. Those who still want to explore can do so as well.
It's totally okay that you don't like this game, I never even expected this many people to like it. It was always intended to be a learning project and nothing more. You're even ok to criticize it. I even encourage it as I've learned a lot from feedback. It just comes off as arrogant when you use words like
wrong and
proper when it's clear that you're really just criticizing a sandbox for not being a visual novel.
The irony, of course, is that I tend to agree with you. I don't like repetitive scenes either, which is why I've implemented tools to help the players avoid it should they choose so. That's something I'm actively avoiding in the design of the next game without going full linear visual novel. Of course that's still a long ways out but it's something that's definitely been on my mind.
