Thanks for the response. While I agree for the most part with what you have to say (Honestly a solid 95-97%), I will say.. it took a while from start to finish to make Baldur's Gate 3, not that it was a strong stance to say that from, but there were some people I remember complaining about the process of the game. Believe me I was there almost from the first week it went up to pre-pay for. Not trying to showing my age, but I remember waiting in line to get the collector's edition of BG2 Electronics Boutique.
I also agree I don't pay for h-games lightly, I just feel like some people have lost the sauce on how hard the game takes to be made, I'm not even saying from just this game's standpoint, but also other games served here where I see people exhibiting this kind of "I want it now" "I want it better" "Do it now" "What's taking so long" kind of energy.
Hindsight being 2020 I shouldn't have responded directly to you, but rather just a comment. Honestly I don't know much about the Dev team here, or if there is even a team, or if so how big the team is. On the off chance let's say it's a single person or maybe two people then I 100% understand why it's going slow. Some H-Games are often done by a single person. (Kind of hard to find a bunch of 'deviants' who have the same vision) in fact one game I'm really embedded with I know for a fact is a solo project, and they're about to debut on Steam.
While I do agree also that the money is to keep the game afloat, it's not a goal based donation system. It's not like they say just pay me this much, anybody can keep paying, if they only needed say 15,000 and people donated 65,000 well in a way that's on them, and to expect over 4 times as much output (again assuming it's a small to single person team) is kind of crazy.
Now I'll gladly admit the biggest oversight I had on this: which was the raising prices.. That I don't have much of a point to defend on. I didn't catch that while gleaning what comments. So I'll admit when I was incorrect about something 100%.
Honestly not trying to armchair diagnose but it sounds like Euromancer might be ADHD ... or a scammer. As a person who is also neurodivergent I feel you, again that comment has kind of been a culmination of seeing a lot of people having this attitude with indie devs where it feels like they're expecting inhumane results, often ignoring a lot of the reasons why it takes that long, bot on here and just... everywhere, and I'm gun shy about seeing too many games take the quick and easy path instead of putting in the effort (Looking at you Star Wars Outlaws)
So in short or TL
R I shouldn't have replied directly to you, I should have clarified this issue came more from an overall vibes check of this website's comments (and other non h-game related comments) more than you personally. Thanks for the response, I always love engaging with somebody honestly and sans the bloodsport of most internet conversations that get divided.
Hey, no problem, always down for some level-headed discussion. And yeah, BG3 definitely took a long time to develop. But I feel like that's part of what makes it a good example for what I was talking about: it took time because Larian are fucking awesome devs and really care about their games. Divinity 1 and 2:OS were both fabulous games as well, and even the open beta for BG3 was better polished than some AAA games on final release these last couple years lol. It might have gotten some backlash here and there for the long wait, but really I think that's because people couldn't wait to get their hands on it - I know I sure couldn't, but I didn't take up torch and pitchfork over it like some people may have. Quality takes time, and in an industry like gaming, where a lot of us can be very impatient, there's a balance to be struck between taking enough time to make the game great, but also delivering in a timely manner, or at least communicating delays or issues. And Larian fucking killed it in my opinion.
Yeah, you're definitely not wrong about that. I feel like that's one of the most common things to see in the comments on games on here and places like Itch, just people demanding more and more updates and content sooner and sooner between releases. That, and people asking for Android ports lol. Goes back to what I just said about some people just being impatient. There are cases where it's valid to rant about updates and stuff, and there are cases where it just makes you look like an ass. Some people just really like to make asses of themselves I guess lol - and I guess in a way I even did that here, depending on how one looks at my first rant.
Yeah, hindsight do be 20/20, but at least that means we can learn from it ^-^ Honestly it's no skin off my back, especially since we've both been civil about this whole discussion. I also don't know a ton about Eromancer, whether it's just one person or a small team or what, but from what I've seen on this site I'm under the impression it's one person, maybe with some outside help here and there, idk. In which case yeah, I can definitely see it being the real reason behind this game's torturously slow progress - after all, admittedly, the rendering and animations are actually pretty fucking astounding, especially for an h-game; it almost looks more like we're playing a live, interactive Blender animation than anything lol. But I, too, am familiar with quite a few games that are solo projects, some of them not even the dev's main source of income, and the way this game has been handled so far feels very different to other solo dev's practices. Which is part of why I felt so confident in my assumptions before, and still do, though I recognize I probably shouldn't have stated them like facts instead of basically educated guesses lol.
True, it's not goal based. Most h-game Patreons and SubscribeStars don't do that, at least from what I've seen. But other devs with Patreons and such for funding at least make much more apparent the effort that they're putting into making the game, so backers don't feel like they're being milked. There's typically a lot more communication, development updates and devlogs, even some mention of where some of the money they're receiving is going towards the game - PomiArts, for example, has mentioned that part of their Patreon money just goes towards the AI subscription used for the scene art in their game Redemption's Keep. But from what I've seen, there's none of this kind of communication, or at least very little, from Ero, which combined with the slow progress, is part of why so many of us are convinced that this project is just being made into a scam and will eventually be abandoned once the donations dry up.
Hey, no worries. I'm sure there's plenty I'm also not aware of - after all, I'm not reading through 300+ pages of comments on this thread alone just to learn the whole detailed history of Ero's business practices lmao. But yeah, raising prices when you've got little to show for it in terms of recent updates is definitely shady, or at very least a bad faith decision.
I could possibly see ADHD, unsure though because I just don't know enough about Ero as a person. Again, Occam's razor; most likely reason (that I see, at least) for everything is just that this game went from passion project to cash cow, and backers are actively being scammed. And I'm sadly just as familiar as you are with seeing tons of comments on indie dev's games that are just insensitive and demanding. Again, I was probably more insensitive than I realized or meant to be in my own post, but I was fuelled by frustration and let it get the better of me for once. Also, I entirely agree about the whole quick and easy thing - though I'll have to look into your example more bc all I've seen on Outlaws yet is like 2 ads lol, and I'm gonna be upset if it turns out that game isn't as good as it looked in those ads lmao
Nah, you're good fam, I didn't take any offense by it. I could tell that you were just trying to look at things from a broader perspective and take other possible explanations into account, and not just trying to start a flame war lol. And you're welcome! I also enjoyed our little chat lol - and am similarly glad it contained none of the usual toxicity that Internet anonymity tends to breed in people. Thanks for the civil discussion, and take care!~ ^-^
